


Blue Through Glass

by evergreen_anodyne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dealing With Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Shell Cottage (Harry Potter), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29395401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evergreen_anodyne/pseuds/evergreen_anodyne
Summary: The sea was thrashing about, like angry fists beating against the eroded shore that trapped it. It was green, too green, as if the water itself was ill of its own violence.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Hermione Granger
Comments: 55
Kudos: 261





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer - I don’t own any of these characters or the setting I’m just twisting them around for my own fun. Please don’t sue me, it’ll be a waste of time anyway because I don’t have any money to fork over.
> 
> Also, I haven’t come up with the idea that Fleur and Hermione fall in love while at Shell Cottage. There are numerous other fics I’ve read with that plot and I am using it here. This is just my version. (Just wanted to make sure nobody thought I was stealing)

The sea was thrashing about, like angry fists beating against the eroded shore that trapped it. It was green, too green, as if the water itself was ill of its own violence. The sky hung over it was thick and textured, painted with oils of similar hues to the water. Dull sage, green olive, and dusky laurel in broad swipes across the heavens. There was no sun to be found, stolen away above the waiting, pallid swells. It was going to rain soon. 

Hermione lay in bed, face tilted towards the open window. The white paint on the sill was cracking and peeling, probably the result of storms since passed. Hermione watched as the wind spun the shutters, sending them banging against the seashell encrusted cottage wall. The fragrance of salt and brine came with it, wafting into the room and settling into the messed linen sheets. She could hear the clashing of the lonely waves, and their cries as they melted away. Hermione wanted it to rain, desperately. It would be something to focus on other than the crushing quiet and her own thoughts, something to distract and something to watch. 

Rain was beautiful, cleaning the stained earth and giving it new life, helping to change and wash away unwanted and sullied ground. Hermione wanted that, needed it.

Her arm throbbed, a reminder. Pain shot up from her wrist. It immediately robbed her of the waiting sky, the dissolving waves, the smell of the sea. Took her away from soft sheets and slept-on pillows. Her eyes watered, she didn’t want to leave now. 

The light in the room dimmed, twisting her vision and turning off the sound, like somebody was adjusting a dial on a speaker. She wasn’t at Shell Cottage anymore, she was lying on the floor at Malfoy Manor. Mahogany boards beneath her, a body on top. A dirty hand pressing into the side of her face, black painted nails scratching. Indescribable pain carving through her right arm, and dark blood dripping like water over glass.

Hermione was screaming. It was like she was possessing her own body, like she was just a guest in a theater watching a movie scene play. She couldn’t change anything, she could only stare through her past self’s eyes up into dark, gleeful ones. Deranged black eyes, laughing down at her. 

She just had to wait it out, wait until the memory would end and release her. She felt each cut in her arm, each letter. M, then U, then D. She shrieked and sobbed. They weren’t even halfway. B, then L next. Bellatrix stuck her finger in the newest slash, taking blood and wiping it on Hermione’s cheek. Her steady tears slowly washed the swipe away.

O, another O, almost done. Bellatrix giggled, drawing the last letter out. D. 

Hermione’s arm was painted in blood now, flowing onto the floor and staining the wood. 

“Look at all that blood Muddy.” Bellatrix snickered, standing up. “Why don’t we make some more?”

Bellatrix’s boot came crashing down onto her forearm. Hermione blacked out, sent falling through space. 

She wanted to die. She wanted to lay out in the wilderness and let herself decay. She wanted to go somewhere where she wouldn’t have to be in pain anymore. Hermione didn’t believe in God, she had thought about it, but her mind was too left-geared. God was not an entity that she could control, and not one that she had been able to know or understand. She couldn’t give the idea any stock. 

If it really was real, she supposed that she was just missing out. No, there would be no Christian paradise, no pearly gates waiting for her, hopefully just some sort of simple, inky blackness. A place where she wouldn’t feel anything, wouldn’t even exist. Sleeping, but dreamlessly. 

It would not be God's heaven, but anywhere where she wouldn't have to fight anymore, wouldn’t have to _be_ , would be its own type of gift. At least for her.

Hermione’s vision slowly trickled back and her eyes refocused. Her senses flared and she felt that her cheek and the blanket beneath it was wet, covered in tears that had fallen through the memory. She was still facing the window.

She had missed it, the sky was weeping heavily along with her now, the clouds were rolling and thundering and yelling. She had missed the beginning of the rainstorm. 

Water droplets bounced on the window sill and flicked into the room. Hermione wanted one to touch her, one to join the rest of the tears on her face. The sky was swirling, twisting the swipes of sage, olive, and laurel and marbling them into new configurations. It’s colours matched the still ever-moving sea, and the two were bonding, connecting through the sheets of rain that fell from one and into the other. 

The smell of wet earth danced with the smell of the water, both settling together into her sheets. It was comforting, drowning out the odor of blood and sweat that had lingered before. It wrapped around her, blanketing her and keeping her in place. It kept her present, next to the rain. She wanted to let it wash over her. She wanted it to make her new.

____________________ 

Hermione awoke after the storm stopped, after the muck had drained from the grass and the rocks down by the beach were drying beneath the mild morning sun. 

The sky was smooth, as if the tempest the afternoon before had worked away it’s clouded knots.

Hermione’s hair was tangled and splayed out over her deflated pillow almost like tawny spider legs creeping from her head. Her neck hurt. She had been dreaming, seeing awful things, remembering awful things. 

She was twisted over herself, with her hands wound around her body like she had been trying to rip herself from her nightmares.

Hermione looked up to the window, eyes dull and ringed and sad. The window was still open but the shutters weren’t swinging as they had been, just hanging ajar, uneven. The smell of the sea was still dancing, but now it was muddled with that particularly distinct after-smell that comes with rain. It was faint, muted. No wind to carry it further to her. 

She sat up and pulled at her t-shirt. It was a bit too big and turned off her shoulder. It hung limply over her hunched form.

Maybe it was Fleur’s. Hermione _was_ sleeping in her room, in her bed. Nobody had told her that, but there were little seashells lined up on the dresser and tasteful, modernist paintings hanging on the walls and moisturizer on the bedside table. If Hermione had ever imagined what Fleur’s bedroom looked like, this was it.

Now that she was thinking about it, she didn’t see anything that even looked like it belonged to Bill. She _assumed_ that the two shared a room, they were married. Surely they did.

Still, there wasn’t anything on the other side table and only women’s clothes in the hamper. Seemingly no trace of him.

Whatever, it didn’t matter. She chuckled dryly. What a silly thing to ponder. Maybe her brain was telling her she just needed something inane to think about.

Hermione swung her legs over the edge of the bed, leaning on her forearms. She winced at feeling her right arm twinge.

She froze, she shouldn’t have done that.

The walls began closing in, the memory was creeping out of the depths of her brain.

Please.

Hermione’s fingers shook as she cradled her arm to her chest, willing the pain to dull away again.

She kept her eyes wide open, focusing on the wall in front of her, at the painting there. The rectangular shape of the frame, the flow of the figures, fluid and organic, the colours, greens and blues and greys. Anything to keep the other thought from sneaking through.

The walls fell back out. Her tunnel vision widened and her hands stopped trembling. She exhaled deeply and let her spine slump in cautious relief. That was a good method, maybe she’d use it again.

Hermione stood up slowly, being careful not to lean on her arm, and brushed her hair behind her shoulders. She frowned at feeling the knots catch on her fingers. She’d have to fix that later.

She sighed and walked to the door, socked feet padding softly across the warm wood. She cracked the door open, poking her head out. The hall was empty, good. Nobody there to corner her and ask uncomfortable questions.

Hermione walked quietly down the hallway, surveying the large number of pictures hung on the walls. There were some of Bill and Fleur at their wedding, smiling and waving at the camera. A few of Bill and his siblings. In one Ginny was grinning and sitting on his shoulders with her arms wrapped around his neck. She saw one of Fleur and an older woman who looked like she was probably her mother, hugging and talking sweetly to one another. They all looked so happy, laughing and dancing in their little frames.

She rounded the doorway into the kitchen.

“Hermione!” Ron said, muffled, sitting at the table with a big wad of bread in his mouth.

Hermione grimaced. Ron was _loud_. What was it, eight, nine in the morning?

Harry was sitting next to him, reading the newspaper from behind his glasses and lurched forwards in his chair. He looked old, like a sleep deprived adult, all tight and dark. She had noticed that recently, he seemed to be aging far more quickly than he ought to be.

“Good morning Ron. Harry.” She pulled out the chair across from them.

Harry smiled at her over his newspaper. Ron swallowed his bread and wiped his mouth clumsily with his hand. “Good sleep?” He asked her.

Hermione looked down at her hands, shaking, splayed on the table. “Sure.”

Harry seemed to catch her lie and he sent her a gentle look before flipping the page of his paper. Ron did not, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, typical really. Harry had always been a bit more tactful. Ron grinned sort of dumbly at her. “Well that’s good then!”

Hermione smiled weakly. Better than having to explain.

____________________

Hermione went on a walk after breakfast, conveniently avoiding any sort of in depth conversation. It seemed like a nice way to clear her head and just be alone with herself for a while.

The boulders pushing up through the sand on the beach were dry now, and there were seashells scattered along the shoreline, having been displaced during the storm. She wandered along, picking up the ones she thought were particularly nice or interesting looking and dropped them inside the pocket of her jumper.

She stopped walking when she could just barely see Shell Cottage, when it was just a brown blot contrasting against the pale sky.

Hermione sat down on a nearby rock, resting her hands on it and feeling how warm it was beneath the sun. She closed her eyes, breathing in the briny smell wafting in from the ocean and listened to waves melt over the sand. Somewhere a seagull cawed, lonely.

“Thinking?”

Hermione’s eyes shot open and she twisted her head to face the question. Fleur was standing ten feet away from her, blonde hair whipping through the wind and hands pulling her cardigan across her chest.

“Yes.” Hermione said quietly.

“May I?” Fleur asked, shifting her shoes in the sand and staring at her.

Hermione nodded and slid over on her rock. Fleur trudged across the sand and carefully sat down.

“Are you alright?” Fleur turned to face her.

Hermione played with the seashells in her pocket. “Fine.”

Fleur smiled sort of sadly and leaned on her hand. “I don’t believe you.”

She caught Hermione’s eyes. Hermione frowned and looked sideways at her. “What do you mean you don’t believe me?” She glared at Fleur as if she had no right to say or think such a thing.

“Exactly that. You are not fine.”

Hermione was thinking up something else snarky to say, but Fleur’s fingers reached out to her own hesitantly, almost pleadingly. 

Hermione sighed, chin falling into her chest. “I don’t want to talk about it now. Please, don’t make me.”

Fleur’s finger looped around her own and she leaned towards Hermione. “That’s okay. I won’t.”

Their shoulders bumped.

Hermione cautiously rested her head against Fleur’s neck and fully took her hand. Fleur leaned her head over Hermione gently, as if Hermione was a piece of glass and if she was pushed too hard she would shatter. 

The two of them sat together for minutes, until the sun had moved higher in the sky and the seagull cawed eight times more.

Hermione felt sleepy, with Fleur’s thumb stroking her hand, and Fleur’s hair tickling her neck, and the sound of the waves falling, and the sound of Fleur breathing above her. She was being pleasantly lulled.

Fleur shifted backwards, and suddenly Hermione’s head sort of fell down into her lap. Hermione was immediately awake and pulling her head back but Fleur only took Hermione’s face in her hands and guided her down to rest on her legs, gently brushing hair out from Hermione’s face and looking down fondly at her.

Hermione flushed. Fleur had _never_ looked at her like that before.

“Sleep, Hermione.” Fleur whispered, smiling softly and still caressing her face. 

Hermione let herself drift, float away again on Fleur’s soft words and touches. Her eyes fluttered, and the last thing she saw before falling were two seagulls flying across the sky above, together and silent.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, next chapter! 
> 
> Thank you immensely to the people who commented on the first chapter, you said some wonderful things and I truly appreciate the feedback. This is my first shot at writing a fanfic so it was very affirming. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Hermione laid in the grass, feeling the damp blades prickle the back of her neck and hands. The ground felt strong and cold seeping through her jumper. Fleur’s hand in hers was warm though, soft, like unmarred skin.

Fleur had let her sleep through the morning and into the afternoon. Now the tide was beginning to rise, bobbing over the seashells that Hermione had walked through earlier. The waves dragged the shells from the sand and whirled them through it’s rough water.

Hermione had woken up on the ground, bordered by the rock and Fleur’s body. Fleur had slept too. Hermione thought that maybe that was good. In a way Fleur had looked just as tired as Harry had that morning, she just seemed to carry it better. Less darkly.

Fleur’s hand twitched against hers. She felt Fleur’s chest expand with a deep, waking breath.

Hermione looked down over her, watching her dazy eyes open. Seeing grey remnants of sleep twist through aegean blue, half-covered irises.

“Did you sleep well?” Hermione asked as she saw the clouds mist away and eyelids open fully.

“Yes.” Fleur’s voice was thick through her sleepy throat. “Did you?”

Hermione nodded. She hadn’t had any nightmares, no dreams at all.

Fleur sat up, hair mussed over her shoulders, and leaned back on her wrist. She looked out towards the ocean as the wind, gentler now, blew hair across her forehead. “We should go back. Bill might be wondering where we are. The others too.”

Hermione rolled over onto her knees and let Fleur pull her up with their connected hands. Her jeans were darkened with dew and her hair was just wet, falling coldly on her neck.

She watched their feet as they walked, falling into step with one another and both squishing into the sand. Fleur held her hand still.

“You didn’t tell anyone where you went?” Hermione stepped over a wide rock.

“No.”

Hermione looked at Fleur sideways. “Oh.”

She turned her head up the beach. They were almost back to the cottage now. Hermione could see the shadows moving in the windows and the notches in the wooden framing.

The sun sent beams skipping over the roof, flooding the tops of the shingles and flattening them. The heavy block chimney was smoking, and thinly exhaling grey smolder that just caught and shone through the sun.

Hermione pulled her hand from Fleur’s when she pushed the door open. She cradled it back into her chest. Fleur glanced at the side of her face before walking through the doorway.

Hermione didn’t follow Fleur into the kitchen, instead she veered off down the hallway towards her room.

She walked inside and swung the door shut behind her. Hermione took the shells she had found out of her pockets, turning them over in her hands and brushing sand from their grooves. She picked up one and brought it close to her face, beneath her eyes. It was small, and a dusty pink colour. A cerith shell. Hermione traced between the salmon speckles scattered and drawn through it’s spiral with her finger. She took that one and dropped it back into her pocket.

She spread the others out on the dresser and lined them up carefully in front of Fleur’s. She ordered them from biggest to smallest, and by colour.

Fleur’s weren’t like that. They were randomly set. Small off-white shells next to big, blue-grey ones. And pink ones, and tiny little red ones.

Hermione left a space between their two rows.

Her hand went back into her pocket to find the small shell. It felt cool in her palm, delicately wrapped in her fingers. It was light, a kind weight.

She brought it to her chest, and laid down on the bed.

____________________

At dinner that evening Fleur had been watching her. Sneaking glances over her soup bowl. Hermione had avoided them and turned away, hiding behind her water glass.

Ron was distracting enough, making a mess of his soup and talking with his mouth full. He was still quite loud. Harry was quiet, sipping from his spoon with his head down. He was far away, veiled behind his steam-fogged glasses. Bill had spoken, but at a much more reasonable level than Ron and more politely. They were really the only two, having their conversation around everyone else’s silence.

Hermione ate mindfully, looking down at her lap and wanting to go on another walk. Quiet was only good when it wasn’t an accident with other people. When it was on purpose.

Fleur looked at her again. Hermione could feel it, prickling the side of her face. It was like Fleur was trying to see her mind, which way the cogs were turning. As if she was trying to understand it.

Hermione still did not meet her gaze.

“I think that I’m finished.” She let her spoon rest in the bowl. It was still half full. She stood up and pushed her chair in. “Thank you for dinner, Fleur.” Hermione looked at her now, just quick. Fleur met her evenly.

She picked her bowl up and briskly walked into the kitchen, going to wash it in the sink. She poured the soup down the drain, turning the faucet on to wash it away.

“Would you come on a walk?” Fleur asked from behind her, her own bowl in her hands.

Hermione didn’t turn around, but paused. She watched the water jet out of the faucet and onto the bottom of the sink, making a rushing sound as it ran. Maybe Fleur _had_ seen into her mind. Maybe she had understood it. 

“I mean with me.” Fleur came up beside her to the sink. She rinsed her bowl out beneath the faucet.

Hermione turned to face her. “Yes.” She said, meaning it to flow more solidly than it actually did.

Fleur smiled and set her bowl down in the sink. “Wonderful.” She took Hermione’s gently from her hands. “You should grab a coat. It’s chilly.”

Hermione stood for a moment, watching Fleur scrub the dish. Her fingers were graceful, sliding over the porcelain.

She turned and walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway again. She grabbed her coat off the rack and paused by the door. She decided to wait outside.

A frigid rush pushed into her when she opened it, forbiddingly creeping over her exposed neck and fingers. Fleur was right, it was cold. 

She stuck her hands deep in her pockets, and scrunched her shoulders up to cover her skin.

The evening was dark already, the absence of the sun draining the bright colour out of the grass and flowers potted on the step.

The only light came from the moon, and it was almost blue as it painted everything else shades of saturated grey. Everything except for the ocean. Hermione could see from the stoop that it was shining tonight. The moon enhanced it, drawing out the different tints of cerulean and navy and cobalt and making them glow together.

“You look cold.” Fleur said, grinning from the doorway.

Hermione nodded and shivered forcefully. “Yes.”

“I brought you some gloves.” Fleur pulled thin knit mittens from her pocket. “I think you’ll want them.”

Hermione took the pair quickly and slid them over her trembling fingers. “Thank you.” She said quietly, her voice catching in her frozen throat.

Fleur smiled, and they began to walk along the path and down to the beach.

“The moon is very bright tonight.” Fleur looked up at it and brushed her hair over her ear.

Hermione looked at Fleur, watching nimble, gloved fingers move. “Yes.” A thought came into her head. She frowned.

“Why did you ask me on a walk?” Hermione asked, suddenly stopping on the sand. She brought her arm to her chest.

Fleur stopped too, and sighed. She didn’t speak for a moment. “I-” She fiddled with her coat sleeve. “I thought maybe you’d want to talk.”

Hermione stepped backwards, away from Fleur. “I think that I told you I didn’t.”

Fleur stepped immediately towards her and hesitantly reached out. “Hermione-” Hermione watched Fleur’s throat bob with a swallow. “I really think that you should.” Fleur took another step. “It’s not good to not talk about things.” 

Hermione shuddered. The cold air was running over the back of her neck. “No.” She took a long step back. “You said you wouldn’t make me.”

Fleur stood there, looking sort of upset. “I know.” Fleur blinked. “I won’t, but- but you must eventually.”

“Not yet.” Hermione held her arm tighter over her thumping heart.

Fleur softened. “Okay. Forget about it, we can talk about something else if you’d like.” She whispered, reaching out further for Hermione.

Hermione was stiff, shoes digging into the sand.

“I promise.” Fleur was looking at her pleadingly, hand still outstretched.

Hermione took a slow step forward. She moved her hand from her chest and set it into Fleur’s.

Fleur looked relieved and dropped her shoulders. They were both silent, beginning to walk again. They were spread apart, but connected by their hands.

Minutes passed in soft quiet. The only sounds were their quiet breathing and the waves moving on the shoreline, playing over the dark sand.

“I’m staying in your room, aren’t I?” Hermione asked, gently breaking through it.

Fleur looked over at her. “Yes.”

“Why?” Hermione scrunched her nose. “Why didn’t you put me in the guest room?”

“My room is nicer.” Fleur said, swinging their hands just barely.

“Oh.” Hermione whispered. The wind combed through her hair. She decided not to ask about the Bill thing.

They didn’t talk for a while then, just plodding along the shore. This particular silence did not feel wrong. It felt purposeful.

Hermione watched the waves dance up the beach, almost touching Fleur’s boots. She looked out over the ocean, past Fleur’s face. It really was beautiful, the way the moonlight glinted off the water, shining a pearly stripe over it. It looked like a long path leading into the sea.

She shifted her eyes to Fleur. Her skin was almost like the ocean. The moon gleamed over it almost the same way. Down the bend of her nose, on her forehead. Over the top of her lip.

Fleur turned to her suddenly. Hermione looked down and away at her feet, flushing at being caught.

Fleur squeezed her hand and leaned in a little closer to her. Fleur was warm, emanating heat. She was bright too, somehow still radiating in the dark, like a sun.

Hermione still stared down at the ground, watching the pebbles and divots in the sand pass beneath her small steps.

“You like walks a great deal, don’t you?” Fleur asked, gently. She leaned in further.

“Sure.”

“Why?”

Hermione looked up at Fleur. “Why does anybody like walks?” Her free hand went to the shell in her pocket. It was hard to feel it through her gloves.

“Well,” Fleur paused. “I like walks because they’re relaxing.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, they can be.”

“And I get to be with nature. The ocean.”

Hermione flipped the shell in her hand. “The ocean is nice.”

Fleur was watching her, the drop of her head. “I think I like walks because-” She looked out in front of her, down the beach and to the cliffs. “Because I can think. Away, from other people. I need to and it’s less tiring that way.”

Fleur smiled, and looked pleased. “That makes sense.”

Hermione turned to her. “Does it? Sometimes I think that I don’t exactly make sense.”

Fleur pulled Hermione in by her hand, brushing their shoulders. “You do to me.”

Fleur’s hair whipped out behind her in the wind, and her fingers around Hermione’s tightened. She looked almost ghostly now, hair made a muted silver beneath the moonlight, and deep shadows cast over her face. Dark beneath her brows and cheeks and mouth. 

Hermione watched her closely. She thought that Fleur probably _had_ understood her mind.

When Fleur turned to her now, Hermione didn’t look away. Just saw Fleur’s lips jump upwards in a grin and change the way the shadow sat on her face. Her hair was still moving through the wind, bent over her forehead. Hermione wanted to push it away, to see the moon glint off her skin again.

Fleur looked back ahead, smiling out at the cliffs.

By the time they headed back, the sky was an inky black and the stars looked so clear and close, it was as if at any moment they could fall and land upon the beach. The moon was even brighter, and it still shone serenely over the two of them. So strong, it almost casted their figures. Like the sun would.

When Hermione was back in her bed, coat and gloves off, she clasped the shell close. It felt warm now, and like some sort of kindness.

She could see the moon through her window, even through the haze that had stuck to the glass because of the cold.

The light still came through.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3!
> 
> Gosh, again in the comments you guys are just so nice and thoughtful. It really makes my day reading them. Thank you.

It was warmer today, Hermione thought, walking down the hallway. It was warm, and birds had been crooning through her window, soft chirps and gentle coos. And the sun somehow looked more jovial, golder now rather than yesterday's severe yellow. 

Fleur was in the kitchen, standing at the counter and cutting up fruit. She had a basket filled with plums and pears and apples next to her arm. 

“ _ Bonjour _ Hermione.” Fleur said, turning to look at her. 

“Good morning.” Hermione smiled softly. 

She stepped behind Fleur and looked over her shoulder. “What are you doing?” 

Fleur sliced an apple down the middle. “Fruit. For breakfast.” She grinned. “Do you like apples?” 

Hermione nodded.

“I think that I might make a pie later.” Fleur sliced through another one. 

“That would be lovely.” Hermione said quietly, watching Fleur press down on the knife. 

Fleur grinned again. “You go sit down, and I’ll bring you some.” She gestured at the slices of fruit. “When I’m done.” She brought a hand up to push a strand of hair over her ear. 

Hermione ‘s eyes followed her fingers. “Okay.”

She wandered over to the table and sat down, taking the chair closest to Fleur. She looked across the table, through the living room. Nobody else was here, no Harry or Ron or Bill. 

“Where’s Bill?” Hermione asked, looking at the back of Fleur’s head. 

Fleur paused chopping. “He’s-” She rubbed beneath her ear. “He’s in town.” 

“In town?” 

“Yes.” She began cutting again. “Getting supplies.” 

Hermione stared further at Fleur’s back. “Alright.”

“And Ron and Harry are still sleeping.” Fleur pulled another apple out of the basket. Her hand was just trembling. 

“Okay.” Hermione turned back in her chair. 

Fleur was quiet, the knife she was cutting with sounded quiet. 

Hermione startled then when Fleur suddenly cried out, dropping it onto the counter and clutching her arm.

“Fleur?” 

Fleur spun around. “It’s fine! It’s alright. I just cut my finger.” She held her hand out in front of her. It was a slash crossing around her thumb, a narrow track of blood spilling down her wrist. 

The colour drained from Hermione’s face. Her hand jutted out and grabbed onto the edge of the table. Her knuckles were just as white. 

Please. Not in front of Fleur.

Hermione’s breath began coming in faster, like each one wasn’t enough, and reedy through her constricting throat.

And the weather had seemed so nice. So safe.

“Hermione?” Fleur stepped towards her. “You-” 

“I-” Hermione choked. “I can’t-” Her throat closed up and her head felt too heavy on her neck. It rolled back. The lights dimmed away and Fleur’s voice sounded like it was coming from the opposite direction. It was too late now. She felt so nauseated, like something was crawling up out of her stomach and onto the back of her tongue. Her eyes glazed over.

She could barely feel Fleur’s hands on her shoulders, pressing in and holding her up in the chair. Fleur looked blurry, her features seemed like they were in the wrong places. Hermione could only tell that she was crying. 

Her shoulders sagged and her mind took over. Stealing her eyes and pulling them up into her brain to watch the memory. It started all over again. 

A silver chandelier hanging over her head. It seemed odd that something so pretty would be witnessing something so horrific. It was clean looking, the scene below it was not. 

Again, the cutting, through her skin and muscle. Each letter. 

The words, revolting breath fogging into her ear. Violent utterings. 

The boot slamming into her wrist, over and over again. It felt like her arm was coming apart, splitting in half. It was. 

Again, falling into blackness. Again, wanting just to die. Wanting to slip away from everything. Nothing being worth anything, even after it was over. Again. 

Hermione stayed in the blackness for longer this time. It was like laying in ink and watching a starless sky above. No definition, or anything for her eyes to grab onto. It was the most silence she had ever heard. Not her own breathing, not the sound of the liquid moving beneath her, not ringing in her head. There were none of those things. 

It was absolute nothingness. A terribly strange feeling. 

It did end though, eventually sound reached her. Urgent whispers of a watery voice. The blackness faded away too, replaced by the kitchen ceiling.

She was laying on the floor, limbs bent incorrectly and awkwardly. Her tongue felt dry and swelled against the roof of her mouth. It felt like there was spit down her chin, tears too, over her neck and beneath her ears. 

“Hermione?” Fleur whispered from beside her, choking, sounding awfully upset. Hermione understood why. She would be upset too. 

“Fleur?” She croaked. It was painful, but at least she could  _ feel  _ her throat now.

Fleur made a relieved noise, suddenly clutching onto her and sobbing into Hermione’s neck, running their tears together. 

“I thought you were dying.” Fleur said, sounding small. 

Hermione tried to move her hands to touch Fleur. They felt slow and like they themselves were drunk. 

“I’m okay.” Hermione said, almost wheezing after the words scratched up her throat.

Fleur pulled back. “You- You were seizing, and I didn’t- I didn’t-” Fleur was grabbing at her head and pushing her hands into her eyes. “I didn’t know what to do.” Her words came in a stuttering rush out from her chest. 

“But you are, okay.” Fleur leaned back over her. “Now.” She rested her hand over Hermione’s pulse, brushing her ear with her thumb. The unbloodied one. 

“Ye-Yes.” Hermione said, attempting to smile, but her face was still slow so it looked sort of strange. 

Fleur leaned closer for a moment. She slid her arms beneath Hermione and cradled her carefully into her chest. 

Fleur’s hair was damp, touching Hermione’s face. Fleur’s heart was so fast against her cheek. Fleur’s arms were sound around her back. 

“Let me take you to your room.” Fleur whispered from above her. She stood up, still holding Hermione. 

They walked slowly down the hallway. Fleur was taking careful steps, maybe hoping not to slip. Hermione was surprised at Fleur’s seemingly sudden strength. It would not have been something she’d have expected. 

“I’m sorry.” Hermione said, tightly into Fleur’s shoulder. 

Fleur paused in the doorway. She craned her neck to see Hermione’s face. “What?” 

“For scaring you. I’m-”

“No.” Fleur interrupted her. “No, you will not be sorry. There is absolutely nothing for you to be sorry for.” She moved a hand beneath Hermione’s eye. “Nothing of anything to do with that is your fault.” 

Hermione leaned her head back over Fleur’s arm. She looked up at Fleur’s watery eyes. 

“It was the blood wasn’t it?” Fleur asked quietly. 

Hermione blinked. She nodded. She suddenly felt so negligible, seen completely through. 

Fleur brought her to the bed and laid her on it gently. “I will remember.” 

Hermione’s hand went looking again for the shell in her pocket. Familiar.

It was not there. Her fingers closed around nothing.

Fleur’s eyes dropped down at the rustling in her sweater. She looked back up at Hermione, aware. Like she understood. Fleur stepped back from the bed.

“I’ll bring you some fruit?” 

“Yes, please.” Hermione whispered, hand trembling.

____________________

Hermione felt as though she had just gone back two steps. Laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. That memory seemed much closer now than it had yesterday. Perched, just beneath wakefulness, waiting for a chance to climb through. 

Even the weather shifted, although the morning’s lucidness had been misguiding. It was shaded now, and dense, murk rolling beneath the clouds. The cliffs looked colourless. Any sparkle or shades of gentle greens from their basalt and peridotite dulled away. The sun was gone, as if it had ran from her. No birds anymore either, no sweet singing. She couldn’t even really hear the waves down on the beach. Everything was still, like it was afraid to move. Heavy and weighed.

It was far too similar to the place Hermione had been earlier. Vacant of clarity and sound and the duration of existing. 

Hermione felt awful.

She wasn’t supposed to feel like she was still laying on that mahogany, red floor. It was done. Why couldn’t she let it go. She just wanted to be rid of it.

Hermione became angry. Her hands flew up to her eyes, fists pushing. She peered into the dark, screaming into her head. Telling it to leave, to go away, to quit hiding and get out.

Tears slid over her cheeks, across her temples and jaw and beneath her chin. Her body was quaking now, heaving with each sob. Her face hurt, from frowning and crying and pressing. Everything hurt really, ached.

Where had that safety gone? The feeling she had had on her walks, when the sun had stood above her. The tender weight of the shell in her hand, pink and clean. The way Hermione had felt waking beside Fleur. It had only just been there. And now it was shattered, smashed into such small, jagged pieces that she couldn’t touch it. 

And Hermione was so tired, so overwhelmingly  _ exhausted _ . Her hands were slipping from her eyes even through her desperate frustration. Falling back had taken so much from her. 

But she didn’t want to sleep. She was terrified at the thought of seeing again. If she was sleeping nothing could stop thoughts from coming to her and stealing her away. 

She dropped her arms back on the bed, stiff against her sides. Everything felt so small, contained and confined. Stuck within the walls. She focused back onto the ceiling. On the wooden beams bending across, over the bed. 

Her eyes fell down to the dresser. Both her and Fleur’s rows of shells looked pale now too. Devoid of their earlier streaks and speckles of pink and maroon and prussian. They seemed smaller. 

Hermione could not fall asleep. She would not let herself. She was just so miserably afraid of what might be hidden in it. Of what might happen if she closed her eyes for too long and let the deeper parts of her mind grasp hold of the unconscious wheel. 

Her shoulders fell back, and her muscles slackened. If she could just sleep without losing any lucidity she would. She did not trust herself. 

A knock on the door. 

Hermione gasped, and closed her eyes and relaxed every limb. Pretending. 

The door swung open, slowly and just creaking. Hermione couldn’t tell who it was, her eyes were shut tight and her head was pressed back into the pillow. 

Soft footsteps padded towards the side of the bed. Hermione’s breath quickened and she pushed her eyelids together harder. She had a headache.

The steps halted. Maybe a deep breath. Hermione just couldn’t tell. 

She felt the air move around her and heard a quiet plink on the bedside table. Another breath. 

The sound of a hand slipping off wood. 

Hermione expected the steps to lead away now. They didn’t. 

They came closer. Hermione could feel the bed shift when the unknown person’s legs hit the sides. 

A soft, breathy noise. 

Fleur? Hermione’s eye twitched. 

She suddenly felt the back of Fleur’s hand on her forehead, gentle and checking. It was cool against her feverish skin. 

“Oh, Hermione.” Fleur whispered. 

Her knuckles just skimmed down her cheek. Hermione sucked in a breath. 

Fleur paused, fingers catching. Her hand fell down the side of Hermione’s neck, resting on the top of her shoulder. Hermione visibly jumped. 

“Ah.” Fleur said quietly. Her thumb brushed across Hermione’s pulse. 

Fleur’s breath was suddenly on her ear now, light and cool. “Goodnight Hermione.” She murmured. Hermione could hear the smile in her voice.

Fleur’s hand slipped off the juncture of her neck, and Hermione felt it run across the bed sheets. She felt them be pulled up over her torso and stop beneath her chin. 

A step back. Another. Fleur walked back into the doorway. The air around Hermione  _ felt  _ darker now, emptier.

She heard the door begin to pull shut. She opened her eyes and lifted her head up to look. 

Fleur’s head was poking through the crack. She looked gently amused, softly gazing at Hermione. A smile pulled her lips up briefly. 

Hermione’s eyes widened. Fleur had caught her.

Fleur didn’t say anything, just tilted her head and drew it back from the doorway.

The door shut with a lingering click.

Hermione turned to see what Fleur had left on the nightstand. 

Her heart sped up when she saw what it was, late afternoon light glinting off it’s pink edges. 

The shell. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4! 
> 
> There’s a tad more drama in this chapter, so be prepared.

Hermione hid herself away the next morning. Even after the sun had climbed above the clouds and released its brilliance onto Shell Cottage’s roof. Even when it had come through her window in lambent, auric beams and cast bold shadows on the walls. 

She sat on the bed, staring across the room at the rows of shells on the dresser. Their shadows were blown. 

Hermione had thought about changing the way she had organized her row, maybe she could make them more like Fleur’s. Or, she supposed with the way Fleur’s were, organically unordered, they would stay unalike. She didn’t though, didn’t even touch one. She wasn’t sure where to begin, how to deconstruct. 

She sighed. Maybe she should just take them and throw them out the window. Try to forget entirely. She turned to face the glass. Golden rays fell through and across her face, like two warm hands holding her cheeks. 

Hermione focused on the gravel path leading from the front step, on the ridges of the pebbles glittering. 

The back of someone’s head covered her view. 

It was Fleur, feet crunching over the ground and hair swaying. 

Hermione thought it intriguing how the colour of it could change so, beneath different heavenly bodies. Silver under the moon, more ochre with the sun. That’s how it looked now, yellow and bright and full of shine. 

Fleur’s head turned. Strands swung over her shoulder. Hermione felt as though she must have looked odd, staring at Fleur from the window. 

Fleur looked up at her. The sound of kicked gravel stopped. She looked amused, but kindly so. 

Hermione didn’t move, just blinked down at her. 

Fleur spun back around and walked further along the path. Hermione watched her go, watched her go beyond where the path ended and out into the thin marram grass bordering the shore. The wind blew her hair like it blew the long blades, wild and uninhibited and irregular. Fleur seemed a part of the landscape, a tall, intricate sunflower growing out of everything else’s relative simplicity. Her hair was the petals. A canary fluttering through verdancy. 

Hermione turned around. She walked to the door and put her hand on the knob, pondering. She bit her lip and walked out of her room, to the front door. She pushed it open and leaned out onto the step. She could just see Fleur, fading away into the grass. 

She walked out along the gravel, following. The afternoon was comfortable, mild air rolling over her skin and dancing through her hair. Her bare feet touched velvety, cool sand, hidden beneath the rustling grass. 

Fleur slipped through a break in the greenery, the sand dipped off and Fleur’s hair swung beneath the level of the grass. 

Hermione followed still.

Fleur was sitting on a large boulder,  _ the  _ boulder. The one they had slept on days ago. Her hands were folded in her lap, elegant, expectant. Like she had been waiting. 

“Hermione.” Fleur looked at her gently. She moved over on the rock and patted the space. It was as if they were repeating their earlier event, only twisting their physical positions. 

Hermione drug her feet through the sand and came to the rock. She sat on the edge, toes just dangling above the ground. 

“Did you want to talk?” Fleur watched her. 

Hermione stared out at the ocean. It was calmer today, smoother, and only just the surface was rippling beneath the wind. 

“No.” 

Fleur tilted her head. “Something else?” 

Hermione looked down at her hands, fisted in her shirt. “I thought-” She took a quick breath. “I thought maybe we  _ could _ , just not about that. For now.” She glanced up at Fleur. 

Fleur was watching her. Eyes quieted, but they weren’t any less alive. Calm blues bending around her pupil. Not dull, never dull. If anything, they were more aware now than Hermione had ever known them to be. 

“Yes. We can.” Fleur whispered. Her hand came up to rest on Hermione’s back. Fleur’s fingertips barely touched the skin above the collar of her shirt. 

Hermione shivered. 

“Why is Bill never here?” The words fell up in a rush from her throat. She looked timidly across at Fleur. 

Fleur’s hand stiffened on her back.

“I mean- I know- it’s not like he’s  _ never  _ here, but I just-” Hermione’s voice trailed off. 

Fleur pursed her lips. Quiet eyes became bold. Their colour was suddenly incredibly vivid, as if they were two old paintings that had been layered in new pigment.

“What if I told you it was because I didn’t want him to be?” 

Hermione’s brow furrowed. “Wha-What?” 

Fleur bit the inside of her cheek and drew her hand down Hermione’s back. It seemed she had lost some of her forwardness. Like what she said had only come from a moment of letting go, and she was gripping back on now. There were canyons in her throat and any other words were falling into them. 

Hermione waited for her to speak, to clarify. She didn’t. 

Fleur looked away. 

Oh. Hermione understood. 

“Is that the thing that  _ you  _ can’t talk about yet?” Hermione asked. 

Fleur looked at her again, surprised gratitude flitting across her face. Her fingers reached around Hermione’s hip. 

Hermione looked back. Right now, Fleur seemed so tangible, so  _ earthly. _ Like she had been sitting on this rock forever, as if she had grown with the lichen and moss that inched over the stone. Fleur’s hand was a leaf touching her. 

“We can just sit, can’t we?” Hermione whispered, leaning closer. 

Fleur’s hand creeped across Hermione’s waist. She nodded.

Hermione felt as though she could probably fall inside Fleur. They were both stuck together in a way, now. Promises tied between them. 

Hermione let herself lean into Fleur, shoulders together. Just like before.

____________________

Hermione sat next to Fleur at dinner that evening, taking Bill’s usual spot. After Hermione slid herself in, Fleur scooted her chair closer. Their thighs were just touching. Hermione felt so warm, Fleur’s leg felt warm. 

Hermione ate her food in silence, still not caring to speak. Instead, she stared down at where her limb met Fleur’s. The different washes of jeans contrasting through the shadow of the table. How sometimes when Fleur shifted, her jeans would wrinkle and Hermione could feel the ridge through her own. How the warmth spread up from her leg through her whole body, like she was ice melting into sun-warmed sea water. 

She looked up and across the table. Ron was staring at her, oddly. He seemed like he was trying to figure something out. She looked back down at Fleur’s leg, then up again at Ron. 

Ron frowned. 

Hermione looked away. 

Fleur’s shoulder moved against her, and suddenly her hand was resting over Hermione’s knee. Gentle and kind and supportive. 

Hermione turned to Fleur, eyes wide. 

Fleur was turned forward, smiling and answering some question Harry had just asked. Hermione couldn’t remember what it was now. 

Fleur’s pointer finger moved in a circle across the top of Hermione’s leg. 

Hermione straightened her posture and set her fork down on her plate. 

Fleur leaned towards her, still looking forward. “Finished?” 

Hermione nodded. Fleur's hand slid off her knee and up to the table to grab Hermione’s dish. Hermione shivered as Fleur’s fingers danced off her shin. 

Fleur stood up. “Is anyone else done? I can take plates.”

Ron held his plate up to Fleur. ‘I am.” He was glaring at Fleur in that painfully obvious and aggressive Ron way. All purpled. Fleur took his plate and didn’t acknowledge his look.

Bill coughed. He was back now. He pushed his dish across the table. “Me too.” He leaned back in his chair and took a long swig from his glass.

Fleur set the other dishes on top of his. She turned down the table. “Harry?”

Harry smiled at her and gripped his plate in both hands. “That’s alright, Fleur. I can take mine.”

Fleur grinned at him and walked away from the table into the kitchen. She lent Hermione another glance before disappearing through the doorway. Harry followed. 

Hermione pushed back from the table and slid out of her chair. “I think I’ll go to my room for a bit.” She walked out of the dining room and turned down the hallway.

There was suddenly a rough hand clutching onto her shoulder, pulling her back. Hermione sucked in a frightened breath and spun around, hands in front of her face. 

Oh. It was Ron. Hermione shrugged out of his grip.

“Sorry, Hermione.” Ron frowned. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

She smiled weakly. “It’s alright.” She stepped subtly backwards. This felt like the beginning of a conversation. Maybe one she didn’t particularly want to have. “Did you want something?”

“You seem real close to Phlegm is all.” Ron laughed and leaned against the wall. “What’s that about?” 

Hermione glowered at him. “Don’t call her that, Ron. It’s rude.” She stuck her hand in her pocket. Her fingers found the shell and clasped on tightly. “I don’t think she deserves to be treated rudely.” 

Ron blinked. “Okay, fine.” 

“I’m close to Fleur because, well-” Hermione looked down at her foot. She slid it backwards on the wood. “She makes me feel- safe. I guess.” 

Ron scrunched his face. “Why do you need to feel safe? Harry and I don’t make you feel safe?” 

Hermione stepped backwards again. “I- don’t know Ron, I don’t really want to talk about this-”

“You’re only ever with  _ her.  _ Never me.” Ron folded his arms across his chest. 

Hermione clutched on tighter to the shell. “Ron-”

“You said you were sleeping.” 

“I was lying.” Hermione turned away from him. “I didn’t want you to ask.”

Ron huffed. “Why not?” 

“I didn’t want to talk about it, I thought you would ask and I wasn’t sure if you would understand.” 

Ron stepped towards her again. “Hermione, I think you’re being selfish. We can’t afford to keep secrets.”

Hermione shrunk into her sweater. “It’s not- it’s not a  _ secret _ Ron, It’s-”

Ron threw his hands up in the air. “I just don’t get what you’re even so hung up on. I mean, you’re fine now. Your arm’s practically healed.”

Hermione shook her head. “That’s not what it’s about, Ron. You aren't under- understanding. You aren't being understanding.” 

Ron leaned back on the wall. “What’s it about then? Help me understand.” 

“Ron that’s just it, I don’t  _ want  _ to talk about it. At least not now.” Hermione’s other hand went to the shell. 

“Oh, and Fleur doesn’t make you talk to her?” 

Hermione squeezed it between her palms. “No. She doesn’t. And that’s why I can be close with her. She doesn’t ask me things and then pressure me to answer them, and she doesn’t accuse me of having  _ secrets _ . Like you are right now.”

Ron looked down at her pocket. “What do you have there?” He stepped towards her and gripped onto her arm. 

Hermione tried to pull away. “Ron-”

Ron tugged on her wrist, and one of her hands let go of the shell. He went to take it from her.

“Ron! Please stop, you’ll-” 

The shell fell from Hermione’s grip, onto the wood, and it shattered. 

Hermione froze. The shell was in ten pieces of salmon and rose coloured calcium carbonate, flung over the floor. 

She looked up at Ron, tears in her eyes. Her hands went to fists, they felt wrong with nothing to hold in them. She was just clutching at herself. 

“What happened?” Fleur’s voice came from the kitchen doorway. She still had an apron on and a hand towel over her shoulder. 

Hermione looked at Fleur, and burst into tears. She sobbed and flew down the hallway, into her room, slamming the door shut behind her. 

Ron stared down the hall incredulously. 

Fleur turned and gave him a harsh look. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve upset her.” She walked over to the fragments of the shell and carefully placed them into her palm, making sure to get every piece.

She stood up and glared at Ron again, before sliding them into her pocket and walking down the hallway, towards Hermione's room.

Ron threw his hands up in the air again. “It’s just a shell!” 

Fleur pushed the door open slowly, and peered around it. Hermione was crying, curled up on the bed and her hands still in fists. 

Hermione couldn’t see anything through the tears tumbling down her cheeks and neck. She was on her side, and they were falling over the bridge of her nose onto the pillow. It was just too much. Way too much. 

Fleur walked over to the bed and sat down on the covers. She rested her hand on Hermione’s back and began to rub softly. 

Hermione cried harder. 

“It’s okay Hermione. It’ll be alright.” Fleur leaned over her. “I know, it’s difficult. I know that it was important to you.” 

Fleur’s hand rubbed the back of Hermione’s neck. “I understand.” 

Hermione pushed her face into the pillow, muffling her sobs. Fleur’s hand kept running over her, gathering her back together. The shell had broken, and Hermione had fallen apart right along with it. 

“I promise, it’ll be just fine.” 

One of Hermione’s hands unclenched and shifted from her chest. Fleur took it gently, wrapping her fingers through Hermione’s and holding their palms together. Taking the place of the shell. 

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5!
> 
> I was pretty excited for this chapter, I wrote it all in about a day and a half. I was just on a roll I suppose.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Do you want me to stay?” 

Hermione shifted against Fleur’s chest. The side of her face was resting over warm skin, the bump of Fleur’s collarbone beneath her cheek. 

“Yes.” Hermione whispered. Her fingers touched the side of Fleur’s neck carefully, exploringly. Fleur was so soft, velvet to Hermione’s calloused hand. Hermione pressed just harder, and she felt Fleur’s pulse. Steady and driving as it jumped beneath flesh.

Fleur sank further into the pillows, pulling Hermione closer. Her arms were wrapped around Hermione’s back, one hand playing with pills stuck to her sweater. The other splayed over the hem, two fingers and a thumb on the fabric, two others touching Hermione’s skin. Feather-like against her lower back. 

“Are you tired?” The lilting timbre of Fleur’s voice blew against Hermione’s hair. 

Hermione shook her head.

Fleur’s fingers slid across Hermione’s waist, just brushing the top of her jeans. 

Hermione turned her head to face the window, off to the side of the bed. It was late now. The moon was bright again, hanging above the ocean and staring back at her. It was so present, the craters looked like eyes. Clear, and encouraging. 

Fleur breathed deeply beneath her. Chest rising into Hermione’s cheek. 

“Are  _ you  _ tired?” Hermione asked, still watching the moon. It brightened further, smiling. 

“Only just.” Fleur’s chin turned against the top of her head. “I can stay up a while longer.” Fleur’s higher hand came up and tangled through the hair down Hermione’s back. “Are you looking at the moon?”

“Yes.” 

“What is he saying?” 

Hermione tilted her head up a bit. “What do you mean?” 

Fleur smiled and her fingers threaded deeper into Hermione’s hair. “When I was younger,  _ un enfant, _ my Grandmere would tell my sister and I stories.” Fleur breathed deeply again. “She said that the moon was alive, human in the way we both are. And that he liked to talk with the people he could see while up in the sky.” Fleur laughed softly. It rumbled through Hermione. 

“She told me that he got lonely up there, all by himself. No sun, and everyone always sleeping.” Fleur looked down at her, fondly. “You were watching him now, did he talk to you? 

Hermione sighed as Fleur’s thumb ran through the hair behind her ear. “No. But I think he smiled.”

Fleur giggled. “Grandmere always said that  _ Monsieur Lune _ was kind.”

Hermione grinned and turned into Fleur’s neck. She felt so  _ warm _ , held inside of Fleur. The moon must have felt less lonely too, because the breath he sent across the ocean and through their window was gentle, and flying. It was full of salt and night as it eased against both of their skin and weaved into their clothing. 

“Has he ever said anything to you?” Hermione whispered. 

One of Fleur’s fingers slipped through a belt loop on Hermione’s jeans. 

“No, he hasn’t.” Fleur’s other hand pushed hair from Hermione’s face. “I think maybe he picks who he’s present with very carefully.” 

Fleur leant in and her nose brushed the top of Hermione’s ear. “Only the most special, and loveliest people.” 

Hermione gasped when Fleur pressed a kiss behind her ear, ring finger twirling through the short hairs there. 

“Fleur.” Hermione breathed. Something was rippling beneath her consciousness.

Fleur’s hand slowed against her neck. The tips of her fingers circled lightly over her skin. 

“Maybe you should sleep, Hermione.” Fleur said, mouth still hovering over her. Her breath was thin, ghosting around Hermione’s head. 

Hermione held onto Fleur’s shirt tighter, fabric gathered in her fingers and twisted over her knuckles. 

“Okay.” 

Fleur’s hand fell down Hermione’s neck, running through her hair before sliding onto her back. 

“I’ll be here when you wake up.” Fleur whispered. Her hand smoothed Hermione's sweater down. 

Hermione looked back towards the window. The moon seemed as though he was trying to sleep now too, darker shadows building in his crater-eyes. 

Fleur exhaled, and Hermione's forehead tipped onto her neck, warm skin to warm skin. 

Fleur smelled like the way the wind moved through the grass down by the beach, and like lit matches, and then the peppery atlas cedar candles those matches started. All of that and the moon's breath spun together into a sweet haze, settling over Hermione’s head. 

Fleur’s hand pressed against her shoulder blades. 

“I promise.”

____________________

When Hermione woke, the sun was leaping through their window, and flickering over the glass. It came in gliding sheets of radiance that left shapes of light on the bedspread. Looping ovals and quadrilaterals bending over the planes of the frame. They fell onto Fleur’s face too, changing into longer, softer figures as they set across her nose and brow and neck.

It reminded Hermione of the night Fleur had been beneath the moon. It was different, then Fleur’s skin had been painted in the ocean and rocks, now it was in peach and daffodil petals. But it was striking both ways, how Fleur was a canvas for cosmic hues. 

Fleur breathed in deeply, and the light moved. Hermione wanted to touch her skin, trace the lines of colour and see if their forms were as warm as they looked. 

The two of them had both shifted onto their sides in sleep, only falling apart slightly. One of Fleur’s hands was still around Hermione’s back, twitching every now and again. 

Fleur’s eyes fluttered open then, immediately gripping Hermione’s.

She couldn’t help but be struck by Fleur’s utter  _ immenseness _ . How she seemed to pull the earth into the heavens. Fleur’s eyes were Neptune and the moon talking and her skin was blooming forsythia and her hair was tying it all together, the sun tumbling to the ground in its mussed beams. 

Fleur smiled, and then her teeth were the frost that sometimes was over the grass on chilly mornings.

Hermione had never seen anything she wanted to experience more. She  _ wanted _ . That thing rose into her awareness. It hadn’t clicked before, it was clicking now. 

“Did you sleep well?” Fleur’s voice was waves rushing over rocks, perfectly grainy and raspy through sleep. 

Hermione nodded. 

Fleur sat up and stretched, throwing her arms above her head like the limbs of the atlas cedar tree she smelled of. 

Hermione watched her move, her back curve and her legs unfold. Fleur had always been beautiful, but in a safely distant way. Passively. Now, Fleur was so palpable, and so present. She was everything Hermione had  _ ever  _ thought was beautiful, every purple sunset and floating lily pad and glittering pink shell all rolled into one being. 

Something had changed. Something about this morning had stripped things away, carefully crafted things that hadn’t wanted to be moved. They were gone and Hermione could  _ see. _

“I slept well too.” Fleur yawned and her arms fell back down to the bed. She turned to Hermione. “Breakfast?” 

Hermione scooted up on the bed, coming to lean against the pillows. “Yes.” 

Fleur slid off the bed and onto the sun-warmed wooden floor. “Okay. You stay here, and I’ll bring you something.” She smiled at Hermione as she rounded the doorway. Hermione heard her steps pad down the hall. 

She looked out the window, meeting the force that had highlighted Fleur in such a world-shattering way. The sun was overtaking the moon, stretching out of its bed beneath the ocean. The moon waved goodbye as it faded away into the blue. 

Fleur came back from the kitchen, back into their room. She had a plate of eggs in one hand, the other was held behind her back. She had the apron on again. 

“Here.” Fleur came and sat down on the bed, still hiding her hand. 

Hermione was about to ask how Fleur had cooked so quickly, but she realized that Fleur must have used magic, and then felt silly. She had almost forgotten, not even remembered that it existed in that way. It was not magic in the way Fleur was magical.

Hermione took the plate and set it on her lap, crossing her legs. The porcelain was warm over her thighs. “Thank you.” 

Fleur smiled again. “Of course, Hermione.”

Fleur watched her as she ate. She bit her lip, and then Hermione watched her too. 

“I have something for you.” Fleur’s voice seemed excited, bubbling up from her chest but wanting to stay quiet against the morning. 

Hermione set her fork down on the plate, and swallowed. “Okay.” She smiled, shyly beneath Fleur’s gaze. 

Fleur pulled her hand from behind her back and held her palm out to Hermione. 

Hermione’s eyes widened. It was the shell, not broken anymore.

It was mended, and the only thing that betrayed it’s past were the faint lines along the breaks, the magic that tied it back together. It didn’t look quite the same, it was less smooth now and some of the ridges had been chipped, revealing soft white beneath the pink. Hermione thought it was just as special though, even more now because Fleur had been the one to fix it. 

“I know it’s not perfect.” Fleur started. “I couldn’t find all of the little pieces and-”

“Fleur.” Hermione stopped her. “It’s- it most certainly is perfect. Better now.” 

Fleur grinned. She took one of Hermione’s hands gently and put the shell in her palm, closing Hermione’s fingers around it. 

“Nothing a little  _ Reparo  _ couldn’t fix.” Fleur still grinned at her, leaning closer with her hand on Hermione’s. 

Hermione smiled and looked down at the pink peeking through both of their fingers. She looked up at Fleur. Fleur was just as perfect as the shell, chipped edges and unsmooth planes. More so with the happiness that sparkled over her. 

“Why are you being so-” Hermione looked back down. “So kind, to me?” Her fingers loosened on the shell. 

Fleur squeezed them, and held them back together. “Because you deserve that. And I want to.” Fleur’s head tilted down to grab hold of Hermione’s gaze again. “I  _ want  _ to.” 

Hermione looked at her from beneath her brow. Fleur was glowing now, set against the sun. 

“Hello?” A sudden voice came from the doorway, the door was creaking open. 

Hermione’s eyes shot back down to their hands. Fleur sighed and turned her head to the door. “Yes?”

Ron’s head peeked around the frame. “Um-” He coughed. “Are you making breakfast, or…” 

Fleur’s hand slid off of Hermione’s, down her wrist. She pushed hair behind her ear. Hermione looked up just to watch. 

“I’ll be there in a minute.” 

Ron turned to Hermione, clearly wanting to communicate with her. 

Hermione would not look at him. She looked at Fleur’s hand in her lap instead. 

Fleur raised an eyebrow at Ron. 

Ron frowned, and pulled his head back from the door. His steps down the hall sounded much heavier than Fleur’s. 

Fleur turned and smiled at Hermione, and leaned in a bit closer. “Come down when you’re ready.” She slid backwards off the bed. Fleur adjusted her shirt over her shoulders, pulling it back up. She walked through the doorway and smiled again. 

Hermione leaned back on the pillows, and watched Fleur swing the door shut. She squeezed the shell in her hands. It felt  _ so  _ warm now, more than it ever had. Maybe it was the magic, Hermione thought, the charm that bound it together, humming through the material. Maybe it was just Fleur, that it was  _ Fleur’s  _ magic. 

She slid the shell carefully into her sweater pocket, feeling the weight of it just bend the wool. She turned and swung her legs over the bed, leaning on both arms. Hermione paused, waiting for it to hurt, to feel that familiar ache, but she didn’t. It felt almost regular. 

Hermione giggled softly to herself. 

She stood up and put her hands out on the dresser. She saw the two rows of shells. They were wonderfully bright now, vivid and full of colour and they looked positively alive. Hermione hovered a hand over the side of her row. 

She bit her lip, then with the edge of her hand, pushed the row so that it was almost touching Fleur’s. They seemed better like that, not so stiff and unfitting. They were more correct now. 

Hermione stepped away from the dresser and walked out of her room, leaving the door open behind her and treading down the hall after Fleur. 

Fleur stood at the stove, hair swaying over her back with every movement. She was humming too, Claire De Lune, by Debussy. Hermione recognized it, she knew it well enough to follow the cascading high notes and then the rolling low ones through the middle of the piece.

Fleur turned to her, a smile on her face. “Hermione!” She began to walk to the table, a plate of stacked pancakes in her hands. “There are pancakes and fruit there.” Fleur gestured at the table. “If you are still hungry.”

Hermione looked over at the table, there were sliced apples and peaches. She walked with Fleur.

Ron and Harry were both there, next to one another. Harry was sitting, leant back in his chair, glasses just tipping down his nose. Ron was hunched forward, putting a slice of apple into his mouth, and then chewing loudly on it. 

“Good morning.” Hermione sat down across from them. 

“Good morning, Hermione.” Harry smiled at her and pushed his glasses up his nose. Hermione grinned back at him. 

Ron swallowed his chunk of apple. “Morning.” He looked at her carefully. 

Hermione's smile faltered a bit and she glanced down at her plate. She reached out and grabbed a slice of the peach.

Ron frowned, again. 

Fleur looked between them as she set the pancake plate down. 

Hermione ate the slice slowly, still not looking up. Ron was staring at her, she could feel it. When she finished the piece she stood up in the chair suddenly, and Ron’s eyes followed her, pancake in his mouth. 

“I’m- I need to uh-” She pointed behind her. “Bathroom. Yeah.” She turned around quickly and went down the hall. 

Ron swallowed his pancake. “She’s-”

“She’s upset with you.” Fleur stood at the end of the table, arms crossed. 

Ron squinted. “Well I don’t think-” 

Fleur glared at him. “Maybe if you apologized. She might speak to you.” She turned, walking back to the stove. “She deserves one.” 

Harry watched the two of them curiously, taking a bite of pancake. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6!
> 
> Just to preface, sorry about this one.

Hermione sat down on the beach. The dampness from the sand snuck through the fabric of her pants and onto her palms. Her hands and heels were sinking, pressing cracked prints into the paleness. 

She looked down the shoreline. There was a crab, wiggling about a gathering of rocks by the water’s edge. When the tide washed in, the creature got buried in the thin sand, only to dig out and keep moving. Over and over again. 

Hermione sighed, and turned to the horizon. It was becoming windy, and the waves far away were choppy, surging beneath the rushes of chilled sea air. She grabbed some sand with her hand and rubbed it through her fingers, it fell in wet clumps through the gaps. 

She hadn’t gone to the bathroom. That was a lie, just a reason to be away. Everything had sort of hit at once, and she didn’t want to think of it with anyone.

She hoped that no one would come look for her. Not Harry,  _ not  _ Ron, and not even Fleur. Maybe especially not Fleur. Fleur would make her feel better, make her forget things, things that stung otherwise. Then Hermione would only want her more. It was tremendously frightening to need someone, secretly. 

Saddening, really. 

Hermione closed her eyes and flopped backwards onto the sand, and the back of her neck was damp too, her head and down her spine. She laid there, slowly setting into the earth. 

“Hermione.” 

Her eyes opened, squinting. An upside down face leaned over her. Hair falling down and around. 

Gosh. 

“Fleur.” Hermione whispered. She had squinted because of the sun, and Fleur was blocking it, but it didn’t matter because she was just as intense, more so. 

Fleur tilted her head and the wind rustled through her hair. Hermione could touch it if she reached up. 

“Why?” Fleur asked. 

Hermione sighed. She could not tell the truth, not all of it, and she could not lie. Something about Fleur’s altruistic authenticity somehow made Hermione unable to think things she didn’t mean. No words made it through the walls barring off her throat, damming up in her chest. She swallowed them back into her stomach. 

Fleur leaned back, hair falling away back behind her ears. 

The sun came back into view, and after seeing Fleur, it was no longer brilliant. Fleur could replace it, Hermione thought. She already sort of had, in an abstract way. 

“I’m sorry.” Hermione could stare up at the shape now and not squint. 

“Don’t be sorry. Please.” 

Hermione burned away into the sun. She  _ was  _ sorry, she was wrecking things. It all had been going so well. She had been changing, inching towards better, and now the cart was falling back off the rails. Her brain was filling up with more unhelpfulness. 

“Okay.” Hermione’s eyes fell down to the sea. She saw bright spots and they danced along the shore, with the crab. The tide didn’t take them like it took the small creature. 

Fleur knelt behind her head. Her hands found Hermione’s shoulders. Soft and wanting of knowledge. They rubbed from her neck to the sides of her arms, so very gentle. 

Hermione began to cry. The words she had swallowed bubbled up and were rising over her body’s levee. Flooding. 

“Hermione, what’s happened?” Fleur’s hands stopped, fingers splayed over the hollow of her throat. 

“Nothing. I don’t know, it’s nothing.” Hermione shut her eyes and willed nothing else to run out. 

“You know this isn’t good for you. You’ll fall apart.” Fleur’s hand ran up beneath her chin, holding her head. Her thumb was over Hermione’s jaw, just brushing the bottom of her lip.

Hermione choked and twisted away, curling up on the sand. Her clothing was so wet, and it was heavy, pressing in over her. 

Fleur sat back on her knees, hands trembling on thighs. She looked hurt, like something had just been taken from her. 

“Do you want me to go?” Fleur sounded small. 

Hermione bent her head into her chest. She couldn’t look as she broke away. 

“Yes.” 

Fleur paused, maybe waiting for Hermione to face her. Hermione did not. She stood up, and stepped away. 

“Please, come back soon.” Fleur whispered. It almost trickled away with the wind. 

Hermione turned her face into the sand, cutting off her breathing. When she tipped her chin back up and drew in air, she felt that relieving, pounding pressure of oxygen rushing back into her head. She looked up, over the shore, up to the cottage. Fleur was gone now, inside the still air of the house. Out of the whipping wind that rattled Hermione’s thoughts around. 

Hermione squinted at the left window. A figure stood behind it, shades of indigo and midnight underneath the grey wind and tint of the aperture. Prevailingly blue through the glass. 

Hermione’s forehead fell back into the sand. She felt granules in her mouth, grinding awfully between her teeth. She shut her eyes, and pushed them into the ground. Phosphenes sparked around behind her eyelids. 

They were blue too. 

____________________

Hermione sat against the base of the cliff, head bent back. The rough stone holding her shoulders and hips and skull was constant, simple and obvious.

The sun had run away behind clouds, and had stayed hidden until it went to sleep, sinking deep into the ocean. The moon was rising, sweeping over the sun in it’s grey shape. It looked unhappy. He wasn’t smiling at Hermione, now. 

She slipped her hand into her pocket, clasping onto the shell and pulling it out. It was always there, glued to her behind layers of fabric and wanting to fall into her hand. It seemed almost magnetic. Terribly fitting. 

She sighed, and set it onto the sand in front of her, leaning to place it a good few feet away. Far enough to lose some of it’s pull. She fell back, shoulders bumping into the rock. She unfolded her legs so they were on either side of the shell. She bent the toes of her boots together, forming a border over the glowing piece. Putting it in a frame. It was radiating more strongly now than ever, reaching farther. 

“Hermione?” A quiet voice spoke to the side of her. 

She turned to look, immediately reaching out to take the shell back, and hold it to her chest. 

Harry stood there, dark and fading away into the night. His hair was recklessly blowing through the wind and his glasses were fogged, tipped down his nose again. Hermione could see his eyebrows behind them, scrunched together tightly. 

“Harry?” Hermione untensed her shoulders. “What- Why?”

Harry sighed and came to sit down next to her, matching her with his head thrown back on the cliff. “Fleur’s worried, and she wanted me to come check on you.” He turned his head to see her. “ _ I’m _ worried.”

Hermione looked away. Of course Fleur was worried about her. Caring authentically, and trustingly, and platonically. 

Harry leaned a bit closer to her. “Hermione, I know you don’t want to talk to anyone. I know  _ you _ , wanting to think everything out yourself.” He tilted his head. “But sometimes, every now and again, you have to let somebody in to help.” 

Hermione held the shell tighter against her chest. 

“You won’t talk to me, not about that. And not Ron either, I know he just doesn’t get it.” Harry pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Fleur,” He paused. “She seems like she really just wants you to be okay. She wants to help, I can tell.” Harry smiled at her, lips softly curving and shadowing through the dark. 

Hermione turned to look at him, tears gathering. “Harry it’s not just about- that. I know she does, and I can’t now.” 

Harry frowned. “What do you mean?” 

“You can’t say anything to anyone if I tell you.” Hermione held the shell over her neck. “ _ Not  _ Ron.”

Harry looked concerned, some of the darkness falling away. “Okay.”

“You have to promise.”

Harry nodded, leaning closer. “I promise, Hermione.”

“I-” She took in a breath, the shaky kind that comes when you’re about to cry. “I think that I-”

Harry turned, crossing his legs. “You can say, it’s alright.” 

Hermione shut her eyes, tight. A tear leaked out. 

“I like Fleur.” The words dribbled from her mouth, quiet and distressed.

Harry was still for a moment. “You- you like-” His eyes widened. “Oh, Hermione.” 

Hermione burst into tears, flooding over her cheeks and down her neck. Harry leant in and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She fell into his chest, forehead against his neck, and hands limply holding the shell. 

“When?” He whispered, chin over her head. 

“Today. I don’t know, probably longer.” She croaked. 

Harry’s arms tightened around her. “I’m sorry, Hermione.” 

She kept sobbing, and Harry kept holding her, rubbing her back. 

“I know there’s not- I can’t-” She couldn’t finish. 

“Yeah.” Harry whispered. 

The night got darker around them, the moon stood out brighter. He was more lonely, separated from the stars. 

“She’s just so  _ good.”  _ Hermione sniffled. “And I feel better with her, but then I just get in the way.” 

Harry’s hand came up to hold the back of her head. “It’s okay, that you feel like that. You are allowed to want things, Hermione.” 

“But- But Bill, and  _ Fleur _ isn’t-“

Harry’s hand stroked her hair. “I know, but this isn’t something that you need to feel bad about, alright?”

Hermione nodded against his chest. “Okay.”

“Good.” 

Hermione moved the shell in her hands, curling her fingers around it. 

The two of them sort of leaned into the wall, Harry holding Hermione and the rock holding them both. 

Hermione turned her head against Harry to look at the ocean. Glowing, and gliding over the dark sand. The moon was still bright, bouncing off the water, but the stars were there too, now. Twinkling, being silently together. 

____________________

  
  


“Will you pass the jam?” Ron gestured down the table and looked over at Hermione. 

Hermione glanced up from her plate, down to where the glass vessel was. Her eyes traveled along the red woven flowers in the tablecloth, the tendrils of colour bending and then stopping in front of Fleur’s plate. They billowed out. The jam was next to Fleur’s fork, the purple inside reflected red. 

Fleur held it out to her, fingers pointed down the jar. 

Hermione took it, shakily. When Fleur pulled away her pointer finger brushed Hermione’s and the jar was almost dropped. It trembled in her hand. 

“Here.” She gave it to Ron quickly. An unaware, oblivious Ron, who went on babbling to Bill and Harry about something or other. 

Harry turned from the conversation and gave Hermione a look, a gently worried look. 

Hermione ducked her head again. 

Fleur was looking at her too, just as gently worried. Terribly, wonderfully concerned. Waves of  _ care  _ pushing in on her. 

Hermione’s hand went to grip onto the chair, fingers clasping around the edge of the cold wood. The jam jar had been warm. Energy from skin running through it. 

Breakfast was uncomfortable, like usual. Secrets and promises always twisted around everything and tying things together and tearing things apart. 

Hermione just wanted to go back outside. She didn’t want to go to her room, Fleur’s room. Fleur’s bed. Everything in there smelled like her, cedar saplings growing up from the floor and curling around the bed frame.

The sheets smelled like her, from the night they’d slept together, wrapped around each other and then Hermione had  _ known.  _ She wished she could go back, back to when she could touch Fleur and not feel guilty. 

“Hermione?” Ron touched her arm. 

She jumped, pulling away. 

Ron stared at her, eyes wide.

“Sorry.” Hermione whispered. Tears welled up. 

“Bill asked if you were going to eat that.” He pointed at her plate, at the uneaten hash browns. 

Hermione shook her head. “No, he can have it.” She pushed the plate across the table to him. 

Fleur suddenly stood up, startling everyone at the table. Bill almost choked on the food.  


She looked at Hermione. “Hermione, will you come help me with something?” 

Hermione shrunk into her chair. “Um-“

“Please.” 

Fleur stepped backwards from the table. 

Hermione slid out of the chair and gave Harry an alarmed look. Harry shrugged and mirrored it. 

When Hermione stepped towards her, Fleur began walking. Down the hallway and turning into their room. Hermione followed, hands tucked in sleeves. 

Fleur stood in front of the doorway, and when Hermione came into the room Fleur leaned over her and pushed the door shut. 

Hermione backed up against it. Fleur didn’t chase her, just stood still. 

The way Fleur was looking at her and then that cedar smell and Fleur’s hair falling over her ears. Hermione felt lightheaded. 

“Please,” Fleur started. “Tell me what’s going on.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7!
> 
> Some things begin to reveal themselves this chapter. Also, there’s still a good helping of drama.
> 
> Warning- There is some brief usage of vulgar language in this chapter. It’s like three lines but that bothers some people, so I thought I might as well write a heads up.

_ Please, tell me what’s going on.  _

Hermione backed farther into the door, shoulders pressed against the wood. It was smooth, painted against her. She wrapped her arms around herself, cocooning. 

“Fleur, it’s nothing.” She said, trying her best to sound sure.

Fleur ran her hands shakily through her hair. The strands fell, distressed over her. “You were- You were doing better, weren’t you? I thought- I don’t know what happened.” Fleur sounded almost frantic. 

Hermione wanted to cry again. “I- I am.” 

Fleur stepped towards her. 

Hermione shuddered and pressed further into the door. 

Fleur backed away. “No, you’re not. Something’s wrong. Something has changed.” 

Tears wanted to fall, Hermione blinked them away. “No.” She croaked. 

Fleur shut her eyes tight, and her hands trembled in the air. “I- I know you’re lying, but I-” Fleur’s hands fell to her sides. “If you can’t talk to me, will you just-  _ please  _ not push me out?” The last words came in bruised whispers.

One of Hermione’s tears dripped down her cheek. 

Fleur’s eyes opened. They were so alive, in a frighteningly desperate way. Staring and running over Hermione’s face. They were begging, grasping at the cloudy layers of glass set around her. Aching to be rid of them but trying so hard not to break anything. 

“I will not make you. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to.” Fleur slipped around the first layer. “I just,” Fleur sighed and her hands swung. “I just want you to be okay.” She slipped around the next, so carefully, and then-

“I’m- I  _ am  _ fine, Fleur.” 

Fleur paused, hands stilling. She stared at Hermione, seemingly gauging her truthfulness. She was trying to weave around the layers, dodging around Hermione’s falsities. Hermione threw out more, hardening her eyes. Freezing them in front of her mind.

Fleur’s face fell, sagging into confused empathy. Her gaze stopped stealing into Hermione, it surrendered, let her go.

“You- Alright, okay, Hermione.” She stepped farther back. “Okay.” 

Hermione breathed out deeply. She leant off the door. 

Her ice maze was empty now, nobody walking through and melting the walls down. She was still hidden, behind layers and layers of blue tinted glass and then rime that frosted over it, altering her. 

Fleur turned away, hair falling from her face. Fleur was not hidden in this moment, not this part of her. Hermione could see her shape, the curve of her brow and the steady bend of her nose and the swell of her lip. Then the disquietude rippling over her, in waves of navy and grey. 

“I’ll go.” Fleur turned back. 

The caliber of Fleur’s eyes fell to strange averageness. That was not normal. They weren’t so arresting, or shattering. 

Fleur walked towards her, and Hermione leaned out of the way when she came close. Fleur’s shoulder ghosted by her neck. Hermione shuddered again and backed farther away. 

Fleur paused, head pulled back from Hermione. Terrible, contagious hurt broke with the waves in her eyes. A crestfallen, slated indigo sea. 

Fleur’s lips jerked. 

She turned and pulled the door open, in front of Hermione. The wood covered her up, and her hair lashed out behind it, amber spinning through the grey room. Then she was gone. 

Hermione began crying again. She covered her eyes with the back of her hands. This was so  _ hard.  _ That wasn’t what she really meant, what she needed. She needed Fleur. For Fleur to understand that she didn’t mean to hurt her, or to really hide away. There were just some parts that had to be buried, thrown out into the riptide and torn to elsewhere. 

None of that could ever be said though. How was she supposed to walk into someone and share with them but then lie too? 

Hermione walked backwards and flopped onto the bed, her hands pushed into her skull. She had melted everything so quickly, frayed rope that held things that needed to stay together, and closed doors that were meant to be open. Unglued Fleur from her. 

Her hand fell from her face and fumbled into her pocket. The shell. It didn't look like Fleur, too pink. Fleur was all sunrise marigolds. It didn’t feel like Fleur, too glassy. Fleur was velvet, or worn satin. 

But it  _ was  _ Fleur, in a way. Hermione could have her without having her. This little unalike piece, with Fleur’s open-handed magic that wanted to hold her, bound through it. 

Hermione pulled it from her pocket and set it on her chest, above the collar of her shirt. It made her skin tingle. She stared at it, wobbly through tears. Maybe she could be content, like this. Living through this, filtering through. Letting Fleur help her from behind it. 

Something to show emotion to, something that couldn’t wilt or be scared or hate. 

Hermione’s hands fell to the bed. Soft linens pushed mussed beneath her palms. More tears slid down her neck, hot and scathing with desolation. They burned as they ran.

This felt like such a mess. 

____________________

_ The crickets chirped together outside of Hermione’s window, a pretty and simple hum. It fit well with the moon. If the cricket song was a colour it would be a whispering sage, and the moon’s silver would make it into an alder tree, growing up so that the moon could touch it’s leaves.  _

_ If the moon began to sing he would sound lovely above their sounds.  _

_ He sent his luster through her window and it fell upon Hermione’s skin, onto Fleur’s skin. It lit Fleur so that she wasn’t gold anymore, she was the rocks down on the beach, worn beneath the waves and shone to pearlescence.  _

_ Fleur’s hand reached out towards Hermione, and the light danced over her, casting shadows in the bend of her arm and through her fingers.  _

_ They came to rest on Hermione’s face. Gentle and questioning. Asking.  _

_ Hermione shivered as they ran down her cheek, tips bending beneath her ear and jaw.  _

_ Fleur smiled, an understanding tilt to her lips. Her hand stopped against Hermione’s neck, wrapped around it and twirling into hair.  _

_ Hermione stared into Fleur’s eyes. They looked so clear, knowing and wanting and loving. A shallow tide pool, something you could walk through. To sink up to your ankles in softness.  _

_ Fleur leaned in, smile lessening as her lips fell open. The moon glinted off of the bottom of her teeth.  _

_ Hermione looked down at them, at Fleur’s mouth.  _

_ She watched as her lips jumped up again and Fleur pressed even closer. Her other hand came up to hold Hermione’s shoulder. She shivered, harder this time into Fleur’s hands. _

_ Fleur tipped Hermione’s head back then, holding her.  _

_ Hermione felt as though she could pass out, with her mind swimming and hands numb. Fleur would catch her if she did, lay with her.  _

_ Fleur’s nose bumped against her own, almost cold. Fleur’s eyes softened, and they jumped across into Hermione’s. Rain unto earth. Asking if this was okay, if they could go farther.  _

_ Hermione nodded, just enough to rub their noses.  _

_ Fleur’s hands tightened on her, and her head tilted to the left, mouth opening, eyes closing, and then- _

Hermione shot up in bed, shell falling off of her chest and onto the sheets with a soft rustle. 

Her hands went out in front of her, as if she was trying to grab at the dream that had flown away. The only thing left in its place now was the shell, glowing under the evening sun the way Fleur had beneath the moon.

Hermione’s head fell forward, into her chest. A melancholic drop. She began to sob, again. Her hands dropped onto the mattress.

There were no crickets outside of her window, only the wind and the rushing of the waves over the shore. It was not the same. 

Fleur was not there, not in her bed, not touching her that way. Hermione could only ever have that in dreams, in short scenes that her desperate mind could write and direct. 

She had cried so much now that her face perpetually ached. The frowning and forceful eye closing and ducking of her head. She had a headache, a heavy band of tension across her forehead. And her neck hurt, the pull and bend along her spine, the throb at the bottom of her skull. 

She clasped her hands over the back of her neck, trying to push the gnawing in her head away. Tears dripped from her face onto the shell. 

Her hands slid down the sides of her face, knuckles then pressing into her eye sockets. They came away wet and fell into her lap. Hermione reached out for the shell, and she took it and held it in her palm. She almost wanted to throw it out into the ocean, put it back with its siblings and make it meaningless again. Almost. She supposed she still needed it. 

She lifted her head up and looked out the window. It was early evening now, the heavy pink of the shell. It was entirely saturating, lighting everything in yellows and cerulean. So  _ unlike  _ her dream. 

Hermione sighed. She knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight. 

She slipped the shell into her pocket, almost unwillingly. When she got out of the bed, she didn’t even let her arm graze the mattress. There would be no risk taking now. If  _ that  _ were to climb out of her mind, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She would fall back apart, into stabbing pieces that nobody would be able to touch to fix. Although, she supposed that was already sort of happening. 

She walked over to the door, swinging it open quietly. She didn’t want anyone to notice her. She padded down the hallway, passing Harry and Ron’s room, the bathroom, and then the guest room. Fleur and Bill’s makeshift room. 

Upset voices came through the cracks in the doorway, one low and sarcastic, another higher and distraught. 

Hermione frowned and paused in the hallway, turning her head slightly to hear. Just for a moment.

She heard her name. 

“You don’t get to tell me what to be upset about! Not anymore.” Fleur’s voice was rising, overflowing water running beneath the door. 

“I just don’t understand why you’re so damn attached to her. You've never been like that.” Bill came through quieter, but gruffer. Harsher.

Hermione stepped backwards, coming to stop in front of the door. 

“I’ve never been like that with  _ you.  _ That’s what you mean.” Fleur scoffed.

Hermione heard Bill’s fist thud against the wall. “That’s exactly what I mean! We’ve just figured this out and now you're running off with _ her _ doing Merlin knows what!” 

Fleur’s breath audibly caught. “What are you even  _ talking  _ about? That’s absolutely ridiculous.” Fleur’s voice got quieter, falling. “She’s avoiding me now, anyway.” 

Bill laughed. “Oh, you’re too much for  her  too?”

“Go off and do whatever it is you do all day. Cause it’s just too much and you can’t  _ stand  _ being stuck here with me.” Hermione heard Fleur’s voice rise again and her step back. 

Bill growled. “Fuck you.” 

“No, go fuck some girl at the pub.” Fleur spat. 

Hermione’s eyes widened and she backed away from the door. She knew she shouldn’t have heard  _ any  _ of that. 

Their voices were flooding so strongly out of the room, Hermione thought that Ron and Harry must have too.

“Now who’s caring about things they shouldn’t?” Hermione picked up the smugness and the snarl in Bill’s voice. 

Fleur sighed. “I don’t. I’m sorry, you’re allowed to do that. I think it would just be good if, every once while, you would stay. It looks strange. I’m sure Harry and Ron have noticed. Hermione’s asked me about it.” 

“Whatever. Tell her why. I don’t care.” Bill's feet shuffled over the wood. Hermione saw the shadows move beneath the door. 

Suddenly, it swung open, banging against the wall. 

Hermione jumped back, almost tripping.

Bill turned to storm from the doorway, freezing when he saw Hermione. His eyes narrowed and he growled again, before breezing past her down the hallway. 

He snatched his coat off the hanger and glared across the hall.

“Tell Fleur not to wait up.” 

He slid his arms into the jacket sleeves and went out the door, swinging it shut with a resounding thud. 

Hermione stared at the door for a moment, as the house trembled with the force of it closing. She turned slowly towards the swinging guest room door. Fleur stood there, seemingly in shock. Her hair looked disheveled, like agitated hands had been running through it and brushing it back. 

“Hermione.” Fleur whispered. 

Hermione’s hand slid into her pocket. “Were you talking about-“ 

“Yes.” Fleur said, quickly. “I’m sorry.”

Hermione stared at her. Fleur sounded upset, but not upset in the way she had sounded with Bill. She was softer, less outwardly bold in the feeling of wrongness.

“Was that- what you didn’t want to talk about? Earlier, with me?”

Fleur nodded. Her hair fell into her face.

“Okay.” Hermione left it there. She knew what it was like to have somebody know things. Not wanting people to be able to see how everything works, inside of you.

Hermione turned from Fleur and followed in Bill’s steps out the door. She didn’t slam it, just pushed it shut gently. 

She walked down the step, crunching across the gravel. She was going to go to the ocean. 

  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8!
> 
> This one’s a bit longer than the others. And things begin to look up. 
> 
> (sort of)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Hermione stood at the end of the path, watching the sky. The sunset was melting into the sea. Heavy brushstrokes of purpled maroon and cerise painting the undersides of the clouds. 

The wind was cool, whispering nothings across her skin and into her hair. The evening was chilling, the sun leaving to sleep. Hermione slipped her hands into the sleeves of her jacket. 

She wasn’t entirely sure why she thought it would be better to be out here, instead of inside. Everything was draped in colours and scents and ideas that just  _ screamed _ Fleur’s name. Everything about Shell Cottage, the squat, stone walls and the wood burning stove’s smoke, to the secure unsecureness of the waves on it’s beach and the breeze dancing through the grass. It all just seemed as though it belonged to Fleur.

And even on her way out here, Fleur slipped in front of her. It wasn’t fair, how everything just collapsed in on itself, in this secret little microcosm of uncomfortability. 

Hermione dug her toes into the sand. She hadn’t put on shoes and her feet were cold. The sun was gone, but not for long enough to chill the ground. 

She had come out here trying to run away from thoughts, in a way. But now with what had just happened inside, there was a landslide of those falling in on her. Heavy, unsure rocks. 

Hermione wondered what Bill had meant when he said Fleur was  _ attached _ to her. That was such a vague word, it could mean, or pertain to so many separate things and ways.

A far away gull cawed, somewhere above Hermione’s head. 

Hermione would never ask Fleur about that. And certainly not about the way Fleur had talked to Bill. Or how Bill talked to her. Not everything was meant to be known. Not everything’s details were fit to be thrust out into the sun. Some things were just between set people, and that was that. 

Hermione could accept that she could not know everything, and that maybe she shouldn’t necessarily always want to. Maybe that was only fair, with her having her own hidden things. More so one thing. 

Hermione dug her feet deeper in the sand. The farther she went the wetter it got, thick and cold between her toes. 

She sighed. 

She began to shift then, breaking her feet from the earth. She plodded down the beach, along the shoreline and just into the water. She didn’t bother to roll up her jeans, and the water splashed up her calves, darkening the denim and sticking it to her skin. The waves were numbing. 

As she walked, her feet sunk into the marshy sand, and it kicked up around her ankles and clouded the water ecru. 

Her feet scraped against small shells, and then rocks sleeping beneath the moving particles. The sun’s glow faded from above her and the moon slid into view. He waved at Hermione, a bright shape above the ocean. The evening was becoming silver again, falling into slate and iron and pewter. 

She turned a little bit farther into the water and the sand dipped off. The sea rose up to her knees, sharply cold and bobbing just barely against the backs of her thighs. She shivered. 

Hermione couldn’t see her feet now, skin completely lost to the whirling sand and the current of the water. She stepped onto a large rock, raising her up for a moment.

Suddenly, her left foot caught on something, painfully serrated. It felt like the edge of a shell. As the ridge sliced the arch of her foot she yelped. 

She yanked her foot from the water. The salt was already burning the cut, and her hands tightened into fists. 

Hermione bent her knee to look. It was bleeding, red already running over the instep of her foot and down between her toes.

The blood.

Hermione screwed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t look, couldn’t look.  _ That  _ could not happen here. 

Hermione hesitantly put her foot back into the water and cried out at the stinging through her skin. She limped through the waves back onto the shore. The water from her jeans dripped down her ankles. Sand was sticking, because her skin was wet from seawater, and now blood. Hermione could feel it, flowing. 

She should have worn shoes.

Hermione quickly lifted her foot off the ground. It was still burning. She hopped up the beach, to where the sand shifted into wide, flat rocks. That would hurt less to walk on. 

Hermione looked along the shore. Shell Cottage was far away, dark and smoky against the greying sky. Just barely bright in some places from the windows.

She began to walk over the boulders. Carefully stepping onto the flattest ones and trying not to make them move. Her feet were leaving footprints over the stone, just dark, and then some red. 

Hermione tried not to look at them. She felt lightheaded. 

When she made it to the bottom of the path, Hermione could see into the windows of the cottage. Low lamplight filtered warmly through the panes of glass. 

Hermione saw that Fleur was in there. Sitting, faced away. Her shadow pushed out from the window along with the light. Hermione could tell it was her, the back of her head, all golden and restrained. Almost delicate, not fragile. 

Hermione sighed, and limped up the path. 

When she got to the door, she paused. She took a deep breath, before slowly pushing it open. The tarnished brass handle was cold against her fingers, and the hinges creaked as the door swung.

Hermione poked her head in. 

“Hermione.” Fleur spun around on the couch and eyed her carefully. Her gaze slipped into worry as it fell down to Hermione’s feet.

“Why are you all wet? You're not wearing shoes either? What were you-”

Fleur’s voice cut off. She stared at Hermione’s left foot. 

“You’re bleeding.” She glanced back up to Hermione’s face.

Hermione swallowed and hid her foot behind her other ankle. 

Fleur gazed at Hermione, concern and firmness pushing from her. “We have to clean that.” She stood up from the chair and gestured for Hermione to come closer. “You could get an infection.”

Hermione paused, wincing as her foot touched the ground.

Fleur took a step towards her. “Please, come here. It’ll only hurt more if we don’t.” 

Hermione leaned off the edge of the door. She stepped into the room, tensing again. She closed her eyes and cried out quietly. The wood was rough underneath her. 

Fleur’s eyes widened and she rushed over to Hermione, reaching out. “Here, let me.” Fleur took Hermione’s hand with her’s and her other came to rest low on Hermione’s back. 

Hermione shivered and took another step. 

“Are you cold?” Fleur led her over to the couch, gently setting her into it. 

Hermione shook her head as Fleur’s hand slipped off of her. That wasn’t why she shivered, and the fireplace was across the room, lowly burning pine kindling and making it smell like the forest that was farther inland. It crackled, hushed. 

Fleur knelt down in front of Hermione, hair falling over her shoulders. She reached out and gingerly took Hermione’s foot. 

Fleur scooted closer and pushed her hair back, and then Hermione could smell that cedar that floated with Fleur. It was always so warm and sunny, even now in the dimness. If the room was an evergreen forest, Fleur was a tree, heady and high and overreaching. 

“What did you step on?” Fleur asked and looked up, face in front of Hermione’s knees.

Hermione felt as though her cheeks must have been pink. “Uh- A shell, I think.” She turned away and closed her eyes as Fleur lifted her foot up, looking worriedly at the blood. 

Fleur paused at Hermione’s discomfort, tilting her head and staring up at her. She looked down at Hermione’s foot again, curiously. 

“Oh.” Fleur said, quiet. Fleur shifted Hermione’s foot into one hand, her fingers bending over Hermione’s achilles and up her ankle. She pulled her wand from her pocket and looked up at Hermione’s face again. 

“I’ll get rid of it.” Fleur closed her eyes and whispered the spell, tapping Hermione’s skin. “ _ Scourgify _ .” 

The blood over her foot seemingly evaporated. It pulled away, rising and disappearing into the air. Hermione was clean again. Just the cut left. 

“There we go.” Fleur smiled up at Hermione. She looked so lucid, in this light. The fire glow flickered across her face and bent her shadows. Hermione looked over Fleur, taking in all of the angles and planes that made her up. The pretty little marks on her skin. Fleur had two freckles on her cheek, dark twins. Fleur’s smile widened and they moved. 

“Thank you.” Hermione breathed, quietly. She looked down at her lap. She fiddled with her hands and the shadows played heavy over them. 

“Of course.” Fleur’s hand shifted up her ankle a bit, fingertips pressing. Her hands were warm, touching Hermione’s still-damp skin. 

Fleur brought her wand up again. She leaned even closer, almost kissing Hermione’s shin as she spoke a healing spell. “ _ Episkey. _ ” She whispered. 

Hermione sucked in a breath as Fleur’s warmed her leg. She felt the cut close up, sealing her skin back together. The sting faded. 

Fleur’s hand slid up over her calf, touching her wet jeans and guiding Hermione’s foot back to the floor. Her thumb brushed across the front of Hermione’s knee. 

“Better?” Fleur asked, hand slipping farther up the back of her leg. 

Hermione shivered again and nodded. 

“Are you sure that you're not cold?” Fleur frowned at her. “These are soaking wet.” She pulled at Hermione’s jeans lightly, and her knuckles brushed Hermione’s thigh. Hermione jumped. 

“Yes.” Hermione said quickly, leaning away. She  _ knew  _ her face was red again. 

“Okay.” Fleur didn’t sound particularly convinced. “I can always bring you some of my own-”

“No!” Hermione blurted out.

Fleur frowned.

She immediately flushed even farther. Her ears burned. “It’s just that- It’s fine. Yeah, fine.” Hermione nervously scooted back.

Fleur’s hand slid down her leg a bit. “Alright.” She shrugged. Fleur stood up then, tall over Hermione once more. “I think I’m going to go to bed now, it’s late.” Fleur stepped closer to her.

Hermione swallowed and leant her head back to look up at Fleur’s face. She looked so gentle, lips just curving and eyes drooping and hair messy. 

“I think you should too.” Fleur’s hand moved to rest on Hermione’s shoulder. 

Hermione stiffened.

Fleur leant down slowly, eyes fluttering. She paused, for a moment. Seemingly asking, as she fell into Hermione’s eyes. Hermione held her head to the couch.  


_ Sometimes, every now and again, you have to let someone in to help. _

She didn’t say anything, but she didn't push Fleur out. 

Fleur smiled and she resumed leaning. “Goodnight, Hermione.” Fleur’s hand slid onto her neck and she kissed Hermione’s forehead. Her lips still softly curving against Hermione’s skin. Fleur lingered for a moment. 

“I’m glad you’ve come back to me.” She whispered. Fleur’s nose brushed against her, sweetly. 

Hermione felt as though Fleur had kissed molten rock onto her. Melted herself down and burned herself into Hermione’s skin. Poured lava into her ears. She felt like she was going to pass out. 

Fleur pulled away, and her hand slipped off of Hermione. She fondly tucked umber hair behind Hermione’s ear, before turning around and walking away to the start of the hall. 

Hermione exhaled heavily and watched Fleur go, eyes still wide and skin still sparking. 

“If you need anything,” Fleur smiled at her and gestured down the hallway with her head. “Come get me.” Fleur turned out of the doorway then, slipping out of the firelight and into the shadows of the unlit hall. 

“Goodnight.” Hermione whispered after her, when Fleur was gone. 

She brought a hand up and touched the skin Fleur had kissed. It was warm. Hermione realized that Fleur must have noticed her blushing, even through the dim light. She must have noticed when she  _ kissed  _ her. Hermione flushed again at the thought. 

She dropped her head back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. The fire was lower now, the room darker, but the light still danced through the shadows on the beams above. Warm and labyrinthine and ornate as it’s shapes moved. 

Hermione closed her eyes. 

She wasn’t sure if Fleur was ever going to leave her head. Not at this rate. Fleur was just too gentle, too kind, too safe. Entirely too perfect. 

Hermione listened to the pine snap and pop in the fireplace, then the waves rushing out on the beach. She was tired, going to bed seemed a good idea. 

Hermione twisted on the couch so that her head was against one armrest, and her feet were by the other. She grabbed the pillow sitting on the far end and clutched it against her chest, wrapping her arms around it. She held it beneath her chin, and the knit textile was soft against her. 

Hermione sighed. 

She closed her eyes again and refocused on the sound of the waves, crashing and playing and dancing. And again the opposite sound of the splitting wood, the popping and cracking. It felt like each one was coming in through a different ear, then mixing together in her brain in what was a sweetly cacophonous quietness. Lots of sound, but only just there. 

Hermione drifted into sleep as the moon looked through the window and watched over her. 

____________________

_ “Oh Muddy…” _

_ Maniacal snickering sounded above her. _

_ “Muddy!” More laughter. _

_ Hermione barely opened her eyes, only just. She caught a flash of rotting teeth and black eyes.  _

_ “Mudblood! Wake up!” The smile widened, revealing decaying gums.  _

_ Hermione shut her eyes again.  _

_ “Mudblood! Mudblood! Mudblood!” Bellatrix chanted above her. She began kicking Hermione’s side.  _

_ Hermione cried out and buried her face into the ground, hiding away and curling up.  _

_ “Wake up! Now!” Bellatrix grabbed onto her by her hair and pulled her up.  _

_ Hermione whimpered and covered her face in her hands. _

__

_ Bellatrix began giggling again. She hit Hermione’s hands away from her face and leant in. _

_ She grinned wider, vile. “Wake up!” She screamed into Hermione’s face.  _

Hermione’s eyes shot open, strained and terrified. Tear-wet soil revealed beneath the sky. Her hands grabbed for the pillow, only to grasp at themselves and realize it was on the floor, beside the couch. 

She sat up. She was breathing fast, not heavy. Frightened, shallow draws of oxygen. Her heart was beating fast too. She could feel her pulse in her fingers as she held onto the edge of the couch. She looked to the window, across the room, and saw that the moon had been hidden. Clouds. A thin, scuffed pall hung in front of him. He couldn’t have seen then, Hermione writhing in her sleep.

_ If you need anything, come get me. _

Fleur had said.

Hermione wasn’t sure if anything actually  _ meant  _ anything, if it were a word that was being used only to facelessly comfort. Hermione didn’t really think so, Fleur had her authenticity. She wore it on her face and spoke it into phrases.

And Hermione was afraid. No moon now, held away in the sky, fire burnt out, black charcoal sitting in the grate, and if any sound, just the house breathing as it rested.

She was entirely alone, and not in a safe way. Or, it didn't feel safe. She could go get Fleur, maybe sit up for a while with her. If Fleur wanted to. 

Hermione hoped she would. 

She stood up, sliding off the couch and picking the pillow off the ground. She returned it to its place beneath her chin. She walked quietly then over the wood, slowing her footfalls to be silent. The legs of her jeans had dried now, and they felt sort of stiff, rough against her. They probably smelled salty. 

Hermione slipped down the hall, and up to Fleur and Bill’s door. She had to be ever so quiet now, just enough to wake Fleur. 

She pushed the door open, slowly, and it just creaked as it swung. She stepped inside and looked over the bed to see where Fleur was. 

She only saw one form, tangled up in the blankets, and hair splayed over the pillows.

It was Fleur. Hermione immediately knew. The hair was silver, only barely catching through the laced moonlight. 

Bill must still be gone then. 

Hermione held her pillow tighter and tiptoed to the edge of the bed. Fleur was breathing low, deep through her chest, rising and falling. Like waves. When Hermione got closer she could smell Fleur mixed with sleep, the kind that settles into sheets in the morning. So personal. A less refined version of a waking Fleur. 

“Fleur?” Hermione whispered, a foot from the bed. 

Fleur’s breathing caught for a moment, coming up and being shallower. She shifted. 

“Fleur.” Hermione got a little closer. 

Fleur’s hand came up and rested over her forehead. She breathed, once very deep and then her eyes fluttered open. Hazy.

Hermione wiped at her eyes, hiding obvious evidence.

“Hermione?” Fleur’s head lifted up, worry filtered into the haze. “Are you alright? Did something happen?” 

Hermione looked down, dropping her chin onto the pillow. “I- uh-” She suddenly felt embarrassed, like an irrationally frightened child.

Fleur’s eyes cleared a bit with understanding. “Nightmare?” She sat up.

Hermione nodded, almost beginning to cry again.

“Oh, come here.” Fleur held her arms out to Hermione. Her sleep shirt was pulled down her shoulder and her hair was messy, bent and tangled over her face.

She looked endlessly perfect. Especially disjointed, no longer in that ‘on purpose’ way.

Hermione leaned forward and Fleur gathered her in her arms, strong around her back. Fleur gently pulled Hermione up onto the bed, pillow and all. Hermione’s head hid in Fleur’s neck and her arms were still around the pillow, pushed against Fleur’s chest. 

Fleur’s hands splayed over her back. They moved over her shoulder blades and her lower back, pushing Hermione closer. 

Hermione breathed heavily, and Fleur only put her hand into Hermione’s hair. 

Hermione’s head fell to the side, resting on Fleur’s shoulder as her fingers kneaded through the strands, running through them and pulling them from Hermione’s face. 

Hermione sighed. 

Her arms loosened around the pillow, falling down. Fleur’s hand, on Hermione’s back, came and pulled the pillow away, sliding it out from between them and delicately dropping it to the floor. Fleur’s hand came back against Hermione and pulled her closer, filling the space of the pillow. 

Hermione’s breath caught when Fleur’s legs shifted and stretched out on either side of her. 

“Do you want to stay up, or go back to sleep?” Fleur asked, beginning to rub Hermione’s back.

Hermione was already almost back asleep. She just hummed into Fleur’s neck, wrapping her arms around her. 

Fleur chuckled and pulled stray hair back from Hermione’s face. 

“Why did Bill say you were attached to me?” Hermione was tired and had forgotten she wasn’t going to ask. It had rattled around so much inside of her and now it had slipped through her sleep-weakened lips.

Fleur stiffened against her for a moment. “You heard that part?” 

Hermione nodded, and yawned. 

Fleur began rubbing her back again. “Because I am. I care about you.” She sighed deeply. 

“Why?” Everything was just falling out of Hermione’s mouth tonight.

Fleur paused, and pulled her head back. She looked down at Hermione, resting on her shoulder. “What a strange question.” Tenderness flooded into her eyes. She smiled. “I can’t help it. You are just so necessary to love.” 

Even through Hermione’s drowsiness that word rang through her, bouncing off the walls in her brain and pounding itself into understanding. 

She couldn’t bear to look into Fleur anymore and pushed her eyes against the side of Fleur’s neck.

“I love you too.” Hermione’s voice broke, even in whispers it fell apart. She began to cry again. “I love you.”  


  
Hermione’s hands tightened around Fleur’s back. Fleur’s skin was getting all wet, Hermione could feel it. She was silently shaking against Fleur.

“You are so tired, Hermione.” Fleur’s hand stopped moving through her hair and held the back of her head. “I will stay, and you can sleep.” 

Fleur leant backwards then, falling back into the blankets and onto the pillow. She pressed a kiss to the top of Hermione’s head. 

Hermione breathed in Fleur’s skin. This smell was more wonderful than awake Fleur. The cedar, yes, that was always there and it was a favorite, but this. This diluted but simultaneously enhanced thing was domestically extraordinary. 

She sniffled. 

“It’s okay, Hermione.” Fleur’s head moved above her. “Sleep.” 

Hermione shifted, adjusting her arms around Fleur’s back.

Fleur’s legs were tangled with hers and Fleur was steady breathing beneath her and her hair was messed beneath Hermione’s face. It was so much, in a hazy, heavy way, wrapped around her.

Hermione felt safe. 

Hermione closed her eyes and breathed in again. It sent her back into her head, tracking the way all of the smells felt. 

“Goodnight.” Fleur whispered from above her. 

Hermione hummed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9!
> 
> I wrote this all as one big scene, so sorry if it drags a bit.

It was raining. Water was running in gliding sheets down the window glass, dripping heavily off the shutters and crossing through the slats. The window was open, but the rain didn’t come inside. The sheets of water bent off the edge and twisted into spindles and dribbled off the outer sill. 

The rain wasn’t angry, or needing to clean or release. It was just weather. Just falling from the clouds in the way that it then later went back up, the sky living as it wanted to. 

Hermione could smell the water, feel it’s chill. The rain still didn't come inside, but the clean coolness of it drifted to her like it was hers. Even finding her beneath the blankets and tickling up her back. She woke with a shiver. 

Fleur’s hands followed, smoothing the cold away. They ran up her spine. She pulled Hermione closer, one hand splaying over her shoulder blades and the other coming to hold behind her neck. 

“Awake?” Fleur whispered against Hermione’s forehead. It tickled, but not like the poking rain, it was warm, and rolling. 

Hermione nodded. Fleur’s lips pressed fully against her for just a moment.

“Better sleep?” Fleur’s thumb bent onto the hollow of her throat and her head shifted down a bit. Her nose took the place of her mouth.

“Yes.” Hermione breathed into the space beneath Fleur’s chin. Her eyes were fogged, only just pulled from sleep, but she could see the few freckles dotted over Fleur’s neck. Two seemingly placed on either side of her throat, tiny little egg-shaped islands dropped into a placid sea. Hermione wanted to reach up and trace between them, to bridge them together with a fingertip. 

Fleur swallowed, and the freckles bobbed. Hermione could imagine them as lily pads rising over a splash in a pond, a frog having just jumped in. Hermione wanted to kiss them.

“Did  _ you  _ sleep well?” She asked quietly, closing her eyes. 

Fleur’s hand moved on her neck. “Yes.” She smiled. “The rain was nice. Droning.” 

Hermione sighed as Fleur’s fingers creeped into her hair. “I like the rain too.” 

They curled around the back of Hermione’s head. “It’s my favorite, I think.” Fleur breathed smooth as she spoke, taking air like drinking water. 

“I think that it’s different here.” Hermione said. 

Fleur smiled and her mouth bent up to kiss Hermione’s forehead. “Yes. Simpler, maybe.” Her voice dipped into a whisper. It went raspy, running against the liquidness of the pattering rain that bounced off the roof, dribbling onto the petalwort nestled into the sandy grass beneath the window. 

“Yeah.” Hermione opened her eyes for a moment and watched lily pads bob again, her word the cause of the splash. “That’s it exactly.” The phrase just floated from her mouth, ever so quiet. She bent down into Fleur’s neck. 

Fleur’s fingers on her back shifted. Hermione was laying on Fleur’s arm, curled inside of it. The muscle of her bicep twisted against Hermione’s shoulder, and she pressed Hermione closer. 

“You look so unknowing when you sleep.” Fleur spoke almost into her head. 

“What do you mean?”

Fleur breathed in slowly once, drawing to expel her next words. “Like nothing bad has ever been shown to you,” She paused. “Like nothing could ever upset you again.” Fleur’s words were hot on Hermione’s forehead. “Everything hard just melts away.”

Hermione heard Fleur shift beneath the blanket. 

Hermione opened her eyes then, only to have them be sucked into Fleur’s, tumbling and tumbling. Like the rabbithole in Alice in Wonderland, but bluer, and sparkling. Mysterious still, maybe. Not frightening. Hermione thought that they could probably lead somewhere just as wondrous. 

“These,” Fleur pulled her hand from Hermione’s hair to trace the lines in Hermione’s forehead. “Are not there then.” She frowned. “Nothing is wrong now and they are there. Just being awake is too heavy.” 

Hermione’s eyes widened, this time there was a tickle of fear. Fleur had watched her and  _ seen her.  _ Known her, and then just picked her apart in one sentence. 

“Isn’t it?” Fleur searched within her eyes, finding more things Hermione couldn’t say. 

Hermione barely nodded, almost not wanting to give that up. It was too late, Fleur had seen so much. 

Fleur’s face softened. She had lines too, in similar places. “I wish it wasn’t like that for you.” Her head moved forward on the pillow. Her eyes were the bottom of that rabbithole, closer the faster Hermione fell. She was almost there. 

“You don't deserve it.” Fleur breathed against the side of her mouth. 

Hermione’s chest heaved. Fleur’s hand slipped from her back, palm pressing beneath her collarbone. Gentle, cradling an unbelieving heart. 

Fleur kissed her. 

Just the edge of Hermione’s lips. 

Hermione hit the bottom of the rabbithole, shattering every single bone, falling to bits. She was right, it was absolutely wondrous. 

She began to cry. Scalding tears ran down her face, blurring sight and wetting the cotton of the pillowcase beneath her cheek. She made a choking noise, almost into Fleur’s mouth. 

Fleur pulled away, hands moving to cradle her face and lips coming back to kiss tears away. They traveled between her eyes and across the bridge of her nose and over her jaw. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and then Fleur kissed her eyelids too. 

“Oh, Hermione.” Fleur’s hands fell from her head and slid beneath and around her body and held her. Fleur’s shoulder took the place of the wet pillowcase, and Hermione sobbed into it. 

“You- I-” Hermione’s voice was weak, unable to pull from the jumble of thoughts and put into words. 

“Shhh.” Fleur’s head slipped over hers, and then Hermione was against Fleur’s neck. Accidentally kissing the freckles she knew she wasn’t supposed to. 

Hermione sucked in a wild breath through her nose. Fleur and her sleep’s presence was heavier now than it was last night. It clung onto her skin and Hermione unpreparedly took it in, mouth pressed shut, trying desperately not to touch anything else. It was too much, far, far too much. 

Hermione couldn’t breathe as Fleur whispered into her hair and her mouth opened, but it didn’t get air. It got skin, warm and velvet and so, so  _ pretty _ . 

Hermione bent her head down, pulling her face away and choking again. 

“Hermione.” Fleur whispered. She sat up and her hand slipped from beneath Hermione’s body. Her other slid to Hermione’s hip and touched bare skin, fingers just beneath the hem of Hermione’s shirt. 

Hermione let out a wet gasp and shivered. She ducked her head further into her chest. 

“Hermione, please.” 

Hermione hesitantly looked up at Fleur, just beneath her brow. She was above, up in front of the window, the dark morning sky. Running glass framing her form. She was silver this way, luminous and unpolished. Painterly, impenitently obvious and undisguised with each cut of colour. 

Fleur's fingers shifted up her hip. 

Hermione shut her eyes again, plunging into something dark to drown out the vivid directness. 

“It’s okay.” Fleur leaned down, back bending to be closer. She whispered from above Hermione. “I understand.” 

Hermione’s hands tightened into fists against her chest. “What?” Her voice came out garbled and warped and ripped. Her head wobbled. 

“I know, and it’s alright.” 

Hermione’s eyes shot open, ringed with worry and shock and almost entirely exposed. Terror tore into her chest, burrowing into her stomach and poking out down her legs. 

“You-”

Hermione was cut off by a sharp rap on the door. 

“Fleur!” Bill’s voice came harshly through the door, shouted against the wood. “Let me in!”

Fleur’s hand pulled off of Hermione quickly, and she grimaced, slowly turning to the door. 

Bill hit it again and Hermione jumped. 

Fleur closed her eyes and sighed. She suddenly looked so tired, like Bill being here had just taken all of her newly gathered energy. She flicked her hand and the latch clicked. 

Bill threw the door open. The hinges clacked on the wall. 

Bill stepped in, hair mussed and in front of his face. He blew it away. “Thanks.” 

Fleur slipped off of the bed, and the covers tangled in her legs pulled off of Hermione. Fleur undid them as she moved. 

Hermione scooted up on the bed and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. There was nothing stopping the chill of the rain now, Fleur gone. 

“What did you need?” Fleur crossed her arms. 

Bill hiccuped. “Just-” He paused, taking on a strange look and wobbling a bit on his feet. “Needed clothes.”

Fleur frowned at him. “William, are you drunk?”

“Maybe.” Bill hiccuped again.

Fleur’s face fell. Into some sort of frustrated, exhausted disappointment. “You left last night. Why are you still drunk? Did you apparate like this?” Fleur stepped towards him, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him. 

Hermione pulled her knees up into her chest. 

Suddenly, Bill turned towards Hermione. He squinted and looked between her and Fleur. His eyebrows shot up. “What are  _ you  _ two doing?” 

Fleur sighed again. “Nothing, William.” 

Bill paused, seemingly confused, and then started laughing. “You’re-” He coughed. “Just upset I interrupted you.” He pointed at Hermione, looking at Fleur.

Fleur pushed him backwards, herding him out. “Come on.” 

Bill coughed again, and then began gagging. 

Fleur’s eyes widened and she pushed him back out of the doorway. Bill retched, dryly. 

Hermione bent her head into her knees, and scrunched her face up. It was  _ awful. _

Fleur looked back at her, lip bit and stress pulling at her face. She turned forwards and grabbed onto Bill’s arm. “Come here.” She led him down the hallway. 

Hermione plugged her ears as she heard Bill gagging and Fleur talking almost sweetly to him. 

That was more awful. 

Hermione uncurled herself and jumped from the bed. The blankets dragged off the mattress. 

She treaded softly down the hall, closing her eyes and rushing past the half-open bathroom door. Fleur standing over Bill, hunched over the toilet. 

She stepped into her galoshes, and her sock was pulled down her toe and then mashed into the front of the boot. Hermione didn’t care, she needed to go. 

Hermione slipped out of the front door, clunking down the step in her boots. Her pants were bunched over the top, catching on the edge of the rubber and pushing up her shin. She hadn’t tucked them in. The rain had slowed by now, only just sprinkling from the sky in little drops of wet that touched her forehead and trickled down her temples and back into her hair. 

Hermione went down the gravel path. Instead of going left to the beach, she turned right, up into the tall grass. It was wet as its flat blades stuck and slid across the skin between her pants and boots, and it left damp coldness behind. 

She trudged through the heavy sand, slipping just barely as she came up the low hill. The torsos and heads of trees were rising above the top of the ground, the forest. Tall, gangly pines, with their high heads and spiked green hair. Then Norway spruces, stouter and plumper, filling in the spaces with viridian needles. Contrasting almost blue with green. 

Then the cedar trees. As Hermione got closer to the mouth of the forest, the smell spun around her, heady and smoky and fresh and clean all at the same time. Woodsy. Exactly like Fleur. 

Hermione breathed in deeply, taking it in. Her hands fisted at her sides, grabbing onto it. 

She stepped into the forest. Greens and greys and wet browns loomed above her, up into the morning sky. The rain dripped off the needles of the evergreens and onto the ground, turning the dark soil darker and glistening on boulders. It was a melody of smoothly groaning branches and prettily pattering rain. Arms and tears, maybe.

Hermione’s boots were stained brown on the bottoms, carob soil and coppery dead evergreen needles. The rubber was blue.

She walked between the trees, finding and reaching out to touch the cedars. Fleur could be any one of them, the spirit living behind the rich bark, in her fantasy. Hermione was gentle, running fingers in the lips of skin. She thought if such a thing were real, Fleur really could've been one. A past life. Grown up from the soil and reached out for the sun and moon for centuries, then slipped back. 

Hermione peered through the trees and found one that was gone, bare with needles and spindly. The bottom was rotting, the log settling into the ground. Feeding the candle snuff fungus and the chanterelles growing on and around it. Bringing about life. Maybe that was Fleur’s body, her first vessel. 

Hermione smiled. What a pretty thought. 

She wandered deeper into the woods, listening to the trees talk to one another, to her. Shifting and readjusting and creaking in their soil beds. There was no wind. 

Hermione came into a clearing, with a large boulder set halfway into the ground and tree saplings poking up around it. She walked towards it, avoiding crushing any of the infant evergreens, and climbed up on top. The stone was wet, like everything else, and cold against her as she laid over it. Her neck and the back of her calves and her wrists. 

She closed her eyes, and the smell of the forest brought her again to Fleur. 

Fleur. 

She had said that she knew. That she knew and it was okay and she understood. 

Hermione ran through it again and the prickle of fear came back, leaking through limbs and matching the numbness on the outside of her skin. 

She  _ knew _ . 

Hermione swallowed, pushing the fright out of her throat. She couldn’t have meant the thing Hermione was trying to hide the hardest. That would be too much, embarrassing. If she knew Hermione felt that way about her. 

Hermione squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to black out the images running behind them. Of Fleur, letting her down, telling her that she was happy with Bill. 

That she did not  want Hermione. 

However true they might be, the ideas seeping through still hurt, horribly. 

Hermione choked on a sob, and caught herself. No. She couldn’t, that’s all she ever did. All she ever did was cry and cry and cry and even more around Fleur. 

She had been too obvious. She needed to stop if she was going to deny everything. 

Hermione breathed the tears back, willing them not to fall and the pain lodged in her chest to break. 

She flattened her palms over the damp stone, trying to pull herself back into the now. She was fine, she would be. She would tell Fleur she didn’t know what she was talking about, and she would mean it. 

It was going to go away. She would make it. 

Hermione sat up and pulled her hands off the rock. They were wet, and little bits of dirt were stuck in the lines of her palm. They looked like thin, dark cuts. 

She slid to the ground, and her jumper got caught between her torso and the rock, and it rose up her back. The rock was cold and rough touching her and her hands were cold and smooth pulling her sweater back down. 

She waddled back through the array of saplings, still being ever so careful not to hurt any. She maneuvered around them, boot lightly sinking into the ground with each slow step. 

When Hermione walked back through the trees, she looked away from the ground, from where Fleur’s body was, and up at the tops of the living trees. The greenest bits. Not the blue that was at the bases. 

She breathed through her mouth too. She couldn’t bear to smell it anymore.

Hermione was spit from the mouth of the woods, purposefully hurtled from its needly teeth. It was as if the forest knew that it was too much for her and guided her through itself faster. 

She trudged down the hill, sand now, and it stuck over the mud on her boots, covering it up. 

She watched her legs wade through the knee-high grass. Her hair fell down into her face and it was wet and heavy and sticking across her forehead. 

The morning was so quiet, only her walking and waves crying and rain just falling. It was as if the grass was whispering and the sand was shushing it, and the rain was laughing above them, sparingly dropping giggles.

She looked up across the beach. She could see all of it, painted in a taupe brushstroke from the edge of the cliffs until the cottage. 

As her eyes dragged across the scene, they snagged on something. A small figure, trudging up the hill. Wild, silver hair and a square-knit cardigan thrown over shoulders and rubber boots. Blue, matching Hermione’s.

Hermione stopped walking. 

She wondered why it was that she was always being found. 

  
  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10!
> 
> Sorry, this ones a smidge shorter and it’s taken me longer to write. I’d fallen into a bit of a rut for a couple days and didn’t get much done. Soooo if this is a bit meh, that’s why. Next chapter should be longer.

Fleur stood just down the hill, head at Hermione’s shoulders. She was stiff, as though her feet were buried in the ground and she couldn’t pull them out. 

“I need to talk with you.” The barely-there breeze lifted Fleur’s hair off her shoulders for a moment and moved the grass at her shins. If she had been a yellow sunflower days ago, now she was an edelweiss, turned into greys. 

Hermione breathed in deeply. “Alright.” 

Fleur stepped once up the hill, heavy. Flower petals blew back. “Hermione, if you-” She paused, thought etching into her face. “If you feel… that way, I-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hermione spit a lie into the sand. Her hands twitched. She was eager to move away from this. Desperately. 

Fleur pursed her lips. “Inside, I- I didn’t get to finish.” 

Hermione swallowed. She knew that. She knew exactly what Fleur meant. 

Fleur stepped forwards again. “I just need you to know that it’s alright.”

Hermione shut her eyes and shrunk back. She needed to stop this, stop Fleur from going farther. “Fleur, I’m not- I don’t feel like that.” Her hands closed into fists. She did  _ not  _ reach for the shell. She always had it, but she would not touch it now. “About you.” 

Fleur stared at her. Thoughtfulness and examination and the power of knowing all built into one chisel that carved her face. “Hermione.” Fleur’s voice slipped into quiet, something that just wanted to seep through layers. Caress through skin and muscle and bone. 

Hermione shut her eyes tighter. “No,  _ No.  _ I am not-” She pulled her fists open and flexed her fingers. “I am  _ not  _ falling all over you, like everybody else does just because of- of who you are.” She almost snarled as the words stabbed from her mouth. 

Hermione heard Fleur step away, boot pull back through the grass. 

“That’s not what I meant.” Fleur paused. “Not what I thought.” 

Hermione felt the sob claw up her throat. She swallowed it back down before it could hold her mouth open. Fleur was going to let her down, kindly and inevitably and crushingly. 

“We don’t need to talk about this.” Hermione turned away. Water dripped down her wrist and off of her fingertip, blending back with the rain in its sparse rivulets and remoteness. 

Fleur stepped back to her, coming closer and standing just a foot from Hermione. Their heads were level now. “But we do _. _ ” Fleur pulled in an urgently soft breath. “You’re- You’re  _ crying  _ and I don’t want you to cry anymore because of me.” 

Hermione, even with shut eyes, knew that Fleur was in front of her. The breeze was coming off the ocean and Fleur’s body was blocking it from hitting her. Hermione could  _ smell  _ Fleur. 

“I am not crying.” 

“Hermione.” Fleur voice was gentle, just tugging again at her. 

“No!” Hermione’s hands wobbled at her sides. “I am  _ not _ !” 

Hermione felt Fleur step closer, the air stir. Heard wool shift over shoulders and rubber boots squish into wet sand. The breeze sighed and Hermione could smell Fleur again, twisting about her and wrapping in phantom fingers around her head.

Fleur’s hand reached out for her elbow, barely touching. 

Hermione jumped and squeezed her eyelids tighter. 

“Look at me.” 

Hermione turned her head away again. “Fleur-”

Fleur’s hand slipped fully onto her, just holding the crook of her arm. “Please, look at me.” 

Hermione opened her eyes, but still faced away. Rain dripped from her wet hair and into her eye. She rubbed it away. Fleur was blurry, just off to the side in her peripheral vision. With her sweater she was grey and blue, and it was as though she was of the sky and water. 

“Hermione.” Fleur’s voice was gently rumbling, the waves rolling and falling into each other out beyond the shore. 

Hermione turned her head. 

Fleur was watching her. She wasn’t piercing in this moment, or pushing to see within. Blue eyes were smooth and set, a lined structure of iris not wreathing. They reflected Hermione back to herself. 

Fleur breathed softly, the wind through the air. “If you-”

Hermione shut her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t bear to watch herself fall apart in that depth. “Fleur, please don’t.” 

Fleur’s hand shifted up her arm. “Please,  _ please  _ let me finish. This is so important.” Fleur tilted her head forward, maybe looking for Hermione to say she would let her. 

Hermione nodded, hesitantly. 

Fleur’s lips just lifted, showing the edge of teeth. Hermione looked down at them, and then winced. She just couldn’t help it. 

Fleur leaned closer quickly, placatingly. “It’s okay, it’s alright. Please.” Fleur’s hand slid down the back of Hermione’s arm. “If you- if you feel as though-”

“I don’t.” Hermione’s words were rickety, scaffolding eager to hold up that untruth. 

“Okay.” Fleur paused. Her eyes dragged across Hermione’s face,  _ showing _ her that she knew. Fleur was being the deluge, rushing through and pulling wood from wood, nails and trunnels. Blue and pushing the scaffolding over. Silently pulling apart the lie. 

Fleur’s lips pursed. “But- But if you  _ do _ , please know that it’s alright. There’s nothing wrong.” 

Hermione wasn’t sure why Fleur was leaving it there, still clothed in cryptic, amorphous fog. “Okay.” She whispered. She just wanted to be done with it. 

Hermione felt as though Fleur had broken inside of her, picked meticulously crafted locks. She had not stolen the secrets but had seen them. Slipped inside a vault of things that she especially was never supposed to witness. 

Hermione felt terribly vulnerable. 

“Okay.” She muttered again. Hermione looked down, away from Fleur and at the grass bent beneath her boots. She stepped just forward. Her own boots left sandy mud on the long, green blades.

Fleur’s hand twitched on her arm. 

Hermione stepped back away, and Fleur’s fingers slipped off of her, tips trailing off her elbow. Hermione turned from Fleur and her hand went to where Fleur's had been. Either holding the warmth and the painfully giddy numbness in her skin or trying to melt it away. Maybe both.

Fleur tilted her head, and her shoulders fell, out from a desperate hunch. 

Hermione swallowed, and when the memory of Fleur touching her had both faded and tattooed itself into her bone, she walked past her. Down the hill, boots kicking up the little bit of dry sand that had lived beneath thicker clumps of grass. 

If she had looked back she would have seen Fleur watching. Eyes beginning to swerve and entwine again, prussian with such  _ absolute  _ depth. Body perched on the hill, feet setting into the sand, light sweater turning dark beneath the wet of the rain. Lip bit.

Hermione did not look back.

____________________

“She said it was  _ fine _ ?” Harry squinted behind his glasses. “That’s it?” 

Hermione sighed and pushed her fingers into the bottom of her skull, pressing into the muscle. Her head hurt, pounded. “Yes.” 

“I guess that means you don’t have to worry about hiding it.” Harry scratched his temple and hair fell into his eyes. 

Hermione fell back on the bed, hand still behind her neck. “Well, not exactly.” She whispered, staring up at the ceiling. Coppery cedar beams cut through the white of the drywall finish in arms of wood, wrists bent at the top of the wall. 

“What do you mean?”

Hermione closed her eyes and let her breathing fade into the rain. It had been going all day, a steady sprinkling of cold little drops that bounced off the leaves of ivy in the woods, and then spilled wetly onto boulders on the shore. 

Hermione moved her hand across the sheets, cool linen wrinkled between fingers. “I told her I- I wasn’t-” Her voice dipped into a whisper. “That I didn’t like her.” Hermione shifted beneath the weight of the shell in her pocket, just hidden in fabric over her stomach. 

“You lied?” Harry leant off the dresser and sat down on the bed, down by Hermione’s feet. 

Hermione curled up and away from him. The shell moved to the edge of her pocket, held over her and in between the sweater and the bed.  


“Of course I  _ lied. _ I wasn’t going to just- just let her let me down. It’s-” She paused, eyelids quivering as they held themselves forcefully shut. “Embarrassing.”

Harry fell back on his hands, after pushing hair from his face. “And she didn’t?” 

“No.” Hermione opened her eyes again. “She didn’t.” Hermione worried her lip between her teeth. 

“That’s good then right? That was what you wanted?” 

Hermione curled up tighter. The shell just poked into her skin through holes in the knitting. “Yes.” Her hands went to hold themselves against her chest, above it.  


  
  
She sighed, deeply. “Did you hear Bill and Fleur arguing, yesterday?” 

Harry lowered his eyes. “Just bits and pieces.” His voice was quiet. “Why?” 

Somebody knocked on the door.

“Are you guys talking about Bill and Fleur?” Ron poked his head through, curious and messy. 

Hermione didn’t look at him, just down at her fingers fiddling with themselves.

“Yeah.” Harry turned. 

Ron pushed the door fully open and came and sat next to Harry on the bed. “Don’t tell anybody, but I heard Mum a while ago say they were having problems.” Ron whispered, leaning in towards the two of them. 

Hermione closed her eyes again. “I figured.” She mumbled the words into her chest. 

“You heard them argue yesterday?” Ron looked over at her. 

“Yes.”

“Not surprised, they were loud weren’t they? Blimey.” Ron leant back and turned to Harry. 

Hermione tuned the two of them out then, tuning the rain back in. Dripping, and dripping, forever just falling in an irregular pattern of pitter patter. Wet little drumming noises on the roof, and on the window sill. 

It sounded like fingers tapping on wood, or maybe book pages. It had that softness.

_ Books.  _

Hermione hadn’t read one in weeks. She had forgotten all about that vellum and leather and ink heaven. Words written to drift into, to get lost, but then to be found in the same clauses and predicates. Nouns, and verbs and prepositions and adjectives. Letters strung together and then spaced apart and written into melodic sounds. 

Iambic pentameter, Hermione thought. 

She didn’t necessarily  _ prefer _ poetry or verse drama, but she would have anything now. A little Keats, or Wordsworth. Maybe even something from Beddoes. 

That probably wasn’t something that Fleur or Bill would have on their bookshelf. Muggles. Maybe she could find some sort of textbook, some large, inscrutable tome to try and think through. 

Maybe she’d look later. 

Hermione listened back to the rain, the tapping on the book pages. She tried to imagine the last one she had read, the black ink painted over the page, the rounded vowels then the sharp consonants. How they would feel whispered over her tongue and thought through her head. How would they sound mixed with the rain?

“Hermione!” 

Hermione shot up, opening her eyes and jutting her hands out to press into the bed. 

Ron, standing over her, rubbed his hand behind his neck. “Erm- sorry, you were pretty out of it. Fleur’s said that dinner’s ready.”

Hermione turned to the doorway and saw Fleur, standing in it. Hands in still-wet sweater pockets, wool still dark. She hadn’t changed. Her hair was mostly dry though, only just damp-looking at the ends. 

“Okay.” Hermione croaked, and shifted her hands back into her chest. The shell slipped out the side of her pocket. 

Fleur immediately looked from her down at the pink thing, stark against the off white of the linen. 

Hermione’s eyes followed. She blushed and stuffed it back into her pocket, hand lingering around it. Cool against skin.

“Let’s go.” Hermione hurriedly shuffled off the bed and out of the room, She turned her head away from Fleur as she moved past. 

Fleur’s gaze was set on her as she walked. Again, Hermione wasn’t looking but she could feel it, so very strongly. 

All the knowledge packed into seemingly perfectly organized shelves and drawers. Eyes a deep library of ideas and thoughts, and then facts.

If Hermione’s feelings were a book, they were in the nonfiction section. Maybe with philosophy and psychology, maybe with social sciences, Hermione wasn’t quite sure where something like that would go. 

Hermione almost paused as she passed Fleur, and almost looked, overwhelmed by the breadth of understanding and grasp. She didn’t though, she avoided the risk of falling in. 

Hermione hurried down the hall and into the kitchen. 

  
  



End file.
